Welcome to the Gap of Dunloe, Killarney

The Gap of Dunloe is Ireland’s most spectacular glaciated valley, gouged out of our highest peaks beneath an enormous tongue of ice. It is a place of wild mountain terrain where the scenery and beauty has inspired travellers for thousands of years. Steeps walls of the McGillycuddy Reeks and of Purple and Tomies Mountains provide powerful edges to this defile, along which the River Loe flows, expanding into five magnificent lakes known as The Black, The Echo, The Ash Valley, The Auger and The Serpent.

The place name, Dunloe is shrouded in mystery. As an acronym, the name place clearly refers to a Gaelic dún (fortress) at it’s beginning but beyond this, there is some ambiguity.Some scholars link Loe to an ancient word lóich or waters, while other sources suggest a naming after one Lugh, the most likely being the great father-God, the god of light/brightness/goodness and of the craftsman of Celtic peoples throughout Europe and who name is accredited to more than a dozen name-places across western Europe, among them, London (Lugh’s dun) and Lyon in France.