At the beginning of this summer, I was given the opportunity to visit an Artists Retreat called Cill Rialaig in County Kerry, in the west of Ireland. Nestled on Bolus Head at the very end of the Iveragh Peninsula, Cill Rialaig was originally a pre - Famine village built on the headland in 1790. The last person to leave Cill Rialaig was in the 1950s - after this, the village became abandoned. Left unto the law of the elements and the Atlantic, Cill Rialaig quite unassumedly dawdled into inevitable ruin. 

It wasn't until the early nineties that Irish Arts mogul Dr Noelle Campbell Sharpe stepped in. At this point the village was seriously under threat and faced with total destruction. However, with true grit and tenacity and by generally just being the one woman powerhouse that she is, Noelle rescued the village and transformed the eight remaining dilapidated cottages into the retreat we see today. A remote and removed place for artists, writers, poets, musicians and other creatives from all over the world  to come and escape to.  

We began the journey down from Dublin, which was by no means short, passing through all shades of green until the train reached Killarney. From then on we had to travel by car, continuing westward - we had a brief dalliance with the well known tourist trap, the Ring of Kerry. We stopped off for lunch at one of the towns on the Ring - Killorglin - before heading on to Cill Rialaig. Think of the quintessential Irish town and you get some idea of what Killorglin is like: surrounded by lush, wild landscape and sky-lined by mountains, dotted with brightly painted houses and a river (The River Laune to be precise) runs through it - crossed by an eight- arch stone bridge. Perfectly picture-postcard.

Killorglin is most famous for its annual goat crowning festival, 'Puck Fair', one of the oldest fairs in Ireland. Noelle told us that every year, local men from Killorglin go up into the mountains and capture a wild male goat. In a post-sedation stupour he is then presented to a young woman from the town, 'The Queen of Puck', who then crowns him 'King Puck' - signifying the beginning of the three day festivities. The he-goat is then paraded around the town before being put in a cage and hoisted up onto a 60ft scaffold in the town square to reign, as it were, over Killorglin for the remainder of the festival. Afterwards, he is brought down from his great height of enclosure and  released back into the mountain wilds. I wasn't sure whether to wholly believe the story at first, but then I beheld a large bronze statue of King Puck presiding over the town. It would seem that wild goat crowning is taken very seriously in Kerry. Records of the fair exist from the beginning of the 17th century, however it is supposedly much older than that, with legend taking it as far back as pre- Christian Ireland to the Celtic festival 'Lughnasadh', which marked the beginning of the harvest season, with the goat acting as a pagan fertility symbol.

Fed, watered and bemused by local traditions, we left Killorglin. Flanked by the ocean on our right, we drove along the coastline, following the water's edge until we reached Ballinskelligs, the village next to the Cill Rialaig Retreat. 

Ballinskelligs is traditionally a Gaeltacht village and one of the few remaining Irish speaking areas in Kerry. It sits on the Skellig Ring and takes its name from the neighbouring monastic Skellig Islands that jut out of the Atlantic beyond its shores. 

The village is small, quiet and sparsely populated, with some surprising and impressive history up its sleeves - leaving you with an impression of it being unsung and overlooked. However, I was told this is mainly because they are a very modest community. Whilst sat in one of the two pubs in the village, Cable O' Leary's, Noelle told us the meaning behind its name. In the 1860s, Ballinskelligs and nearby Valentia Island, were the sites of the laying of the first successful Transatlantic telegraph cable from Europe to North America. They literally laid a cable across the Atlantic Ocean all the way from Ballinskelligs to America, which resulted in nearly instantaneous communication between  two continents. Local legend tells of a giant of a man named Denis O' Leary, who completed the link in the Transatlantic communication system. When the ship bearing the cable couldn't bring it ashore because the water in the bay was too shallow, twelve local men were sent out in a boat from Ballinskelligs to try and move the cable from the ship to the shore. Despite all their force  and determination they could not move the cable - this is where Denis O'Leary stepped in. On seeing the problem he waded out to the men in the boat until the water of the bay was up to his chin. They passed him the cable and single-handedly he pulled the cable yard by yard with bloodied hands to the shore with the strength greater than that of twelve men. According to Noelle the end of the cable could still be seen at the bottom of the caravan park next door to the pub. "There ought to be a blue plaque or something by that cable, most places would have something like that but they're just not bothered about that sort of thing here. They named a pub after it instead". I checked afterwards and sure enough she was right, there lay O'Leary's cable, poking out the ground - not a plaque in sight. 

After a look around Ballinskelligs we carried on up the hill to Cill Rialaig, finally completing our journey. To say it's tucked away would be a bit of an understatement. Being one of the most westerly points on the Irish mainland it literally is on the edge of it all. You feel that when you're there. When you look out across the vast expanse of sea that is the North Atlantic Ocean and you know you're not going to be hitting any land until you get to America. It's such an overwhelming sensation of size and scale. It gets you right in your gut. You somehow manage to feel miniscule and gigantic all at the same time. 

Apparently it is not uncommon to see whales and porpoises from the cliff edge. If you're lucky in late summer and into the autumn you might catch a glimpse of a Humpback Whale and according to Noelle Orcas and Basking Sharks have also been spotted here. You can see why they call it  'The Wild Atlantic Way'. 

The cottages themselves have been lovingly and beautifully restored. A few had smoke from the peat fires coming from their chimneys, tell-tale signs of the artists residing within. You have to apply to Noelle directly via her gallery in Dublin to spend some time at the retreat, as there is no formal website. Demand is high however the residencies are free as long as you contribute back to the community in some way. You can spend up to four weeks at Cill Rialaig and although the remoteness isn't for the feint hearted, it will certainly take your breathe away and leave you feeling inspired. I definitely had plenty of heart-in-mouth moments in that little corner of the world.