About Healy Pass Waterfall
The Healy Pass Waterfall was really my excuse to cut through the inner heart of the Ring of Beara Peninsula contrasting the scenery along its more well-traveled coastal route.
The waterfall itself is more like a cascade that just so happens to be nearby a known landmark (i.e. the Healy Pass).
It was modestly-sized and not likely to have a long season given that the Beara Peninsula seemed to be sunnier and drier compared to the other well-known peninsulas of Ireland’s west coast.
By the way, Healy Pass was named after Timothy Michael Healy, who was the first governor general of the Irish Free State, and it was built in 1847 to help stave off starvation during the famine.
As for experiencing the waterfall, it’s roadside easily seen from a road bridge.
There’s some room on the corners of the bridge that allowed us to briefly park the car and take pictures (though it’s definitely not a place to linger).
However, if you do want to linger around here, there’s more parking spaces at the Healy Pass itself.
From there, you can walk back towards the road bridge in front of the Healy Pass Waterfall (a distance of about 600m in each direction (or 1.2km round-trip).
By the way, my topo map suggested that there might be another waterfall further down on the County Cork side of the Healy Pass.
Unfortunately, we didn’t stop for it as it didn’t seem significant enough for us bother in our haste to continue exploring the Beara in limited time.
Authorities
The Healy Pass Waterfall is in the Ring of Beara between the towns of Kenmare and Glengarriff straddling the boundary of County Kerry and County Cork, Ireland. It is administered by the Transport Infrastructure Ireland (TII). For information or inquiries about the area as well as current conditions, you can try visiting the Beara Tourism website.
The Healy Pass Waterfall is only 600m from the Healy Pass Scenic Viewpoint on the Beara Peninsula between the towns of Kenmare and Glengarriff.
It’s pretty straightforward to route to Healy Pass on GPS apps like GoogleMaps as there are many ways of getting to Healy Pass, and the route you take depends on your starting point.
As far as driving here from Kenmare, which was where we were staying, we followed this basic route.
From the one-way triangle in the Kenmare town centre, we went south on the N71 for about 900m, then turned right and followed the R571 for a little over 23km (keeping left to stay on the R571 after 13.4km after leaving the N71).
Then, we turned left onto the R574 Road (signed for Healy Pass), and we then followed this road for another 5.4km more before reaching the bridge at the Healy Pass Waterfall.
There were some informal spaces on either side of the road bridge to temporarily park and get out of the way of traffic on the narrow road.
However, if you want to linger longer, it’s also possible to drive another 600m more to the Healy Pass Scenic Viewpoint and then walk back to the Healy Pass Waterfall.
Overall, this 30km drive would take over 30 minutes (closer to 45 minutes or so).
If coming from Glengarriff, the most straightforward route would be to head southwest from the R572 Road towards Castletownbere and the Ring of Beara.
We’d follow this road for a little under 18km before turning right onto the R574 Road towards Lauragh (just past the Adrigole Bridge).
From there, we’d drive the remaining 6.6km to the Healy Pass (it’s another 600m to the Healy Pass Waterfall).
Overall, this 24km drive should take about 30 minutes.
For context, Kenmare is about 27km (about 30 minutes drive) north of Glengarriff, about 43km (over 30 minutes drive) south of Killarney, 106km (about 2 hours drive) southeast of Dingle, 119km (about 2 hours drive) south of Tarbert, 83km (about 90 minutes drive) east of Portmagee, 96km (about 90 minutes drive) west of Cork, about 140km (over 2 hours drive) southwest of Limerick, and 353km (about 4 hours drive) southwest of Dublin.
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Checking out the stream from both sides of the bridge while also doing a zoomed in panning on the Healy Pass Waterfall
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