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Beyond the town's centre, situated on the hummocky fist of land that curls into Kinsale Harbour, James Fort (1601) is fun to clamber over, and during the summer you can take a ferry out to it from the Trident Hotel marina, a short walk west of town (summer only: every hour; 5min, GBP1/?1.27 each way). Better preserved is Charles' Fort (1677), two miles out of town at SUMMERCOVE (mid-April to mid-June & mid-Sept to mid-Oct Mon-Sat 9am-5pm, Sun 9.30am-5.30pm; mid-June to mid-Sept daily 9am-6pm; GBP2/?2.54; Heritage Card). There's a very pleasant walk out here from Kinsale that takes you alongside the harbour: to find it, follow the minor coast road east for a quarter of a mile to The Spaniards pub at Scilly, and look out for a path down towards the sea. The outer walls of Charles' Fort, barely touched by weather or gunfire, seem pretty innocuous, but they conceal a formidable war machine. Within is an awesome system of barracks, ramparts and bastions, impressive testimony to the complexity and precision of seventeenth-century military science. The barracks were occupied until 1922, when the British left and handed the fort over to the Irish government. Today they remain largely intact, with only the barracks' missing roofs to give the place an eerily deserted feel. The Bulman pub at Summercove serves very good barfood and makes the ideal place to recharge the batteries before making the pleasant stroll back into town.
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