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Oddly enough, given its origins as a tourist town, Killarney turns its back on the grand scenery to the west and south, hunching itself inwards so that you'd hardly guess at the delights that await you. But the gates of the old Kenmare Estate - now known as the KNOCKREER ESTATE - are just over the road from the cathedral, and a short walk through the grounds takes you to the banks of Lough Leane. The Browne family, Earls of Kenmare, were unusual among the Irish peerage in that they never renounced their Catholic faith. Given lands confiscated from the O'Donoghues in the seventeenth century, they were subject in the eighteenth century to the penal laws which decreed that every Catholic landowner had to divide his property among his male heirs. The Brownes' estate remained intact quite simply because there was only one son in each generation. At Lough Leane , the scenery is magnificent: tall wooded hills plunge into the water, with the mountain peaks rising behind to the highest, Carrauntoohil (3411ft). Ireland's last wild wolf was killed here in 1700, and when the weather's bad (as it often is) there's a satisfying similarity to early Romantic engravings. The main path through the Knockreer Estate leads to the restored fifteenth-century stronghold of Ross Castle (April daily 10am-5pm; May & Sept daily 10am-6pm; June-Aug daily 9am-6.30pm; Oct Tues-Sun 10am-5pm; closed Nov-March; GBP3/?3.82, Heritage Card), the last place in Munster to succumb to Cromwell's forces in 1652. The story goes that General Ludlow, having learned of a tradition that Ross Castle would never be taken from land, brought ships from Kenmare and sailed them up from Castlemaine, whereupon the defenders - whom nothing else had budged - immediately surrendered. It houses examples of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century furniture; somehow the interior lacks a sense of it's medieval history. Near the water you can make out copper workings, last used during the Napoleonic Wars and thought to date back four thousand years. From Ross Castle you can tour the lake in large glassed-over boats like the bateaux-mouches that ply the Seine in Paris (GBP6/?7.62; trips last one hour); an alternative is to get a fisherman to take you out in a little craft with an outboard motor, or rent one yourself. This way, you can land on and explore the island of Inisfallen. (If you're navigating yourself, look for a limestone outcrop in the water. Inisfallen is the island to the left, about a mile out.)
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