Beentee (Irish Binn an Tí, ‘peak of the house’) is only 376 metres high, but it rises straight out the back of Cahersiveen and gives you the whole western Ring of Kerry from one summit. MountainViews calls it the town’s ‘home mountain’, and that is exactly the role it plays: a half-day climb from the main street to a 360° view taking in Valentia Island, the Dingle Peninsula, MacGillycuddy’s Reeks and, out on the Atlantic, the jagged Skellig Islands. If you want a bigger, higher pilgrim climb afterwards, Cnoc na dTobar (690 m) is just up the road – but Beentee gives the most view for the least effort on this stretch of coast.
The walk
The Beentee Loop is 9.5 km, climbing about 420 m, and Sport Ireland grades it strenuous and allows four hours – take the four, because the upper sections are rough and boggy underfoot. It starts at the Fairgreen Car Park in the middle of Cahersiveen (free, beside the Garda station) and is waymarked with purple arrows on a white background; the first stretch out of the car park also follows blue arrows and the yellow ‘walking man’ of the Kerry Way before the loop peels off. After about a kilometre it joins an old mass path, then climbs to the steep final pull onto the summit and drops down the western side by Garranebawn back to a quiet road into town.
Two variations: fitter walkers can split off at the top onto a red-marked route that adds roughly 3 km, and there is a much shorter 2 km loop on the western slopes from Garranebawn. The trail crosses working farmland with the owners’ permission, so stay on the marked path, leave gates as you find them, and note that dogs are not allowed because of grazing livestock.
The mass path and the town
The old route the loop follows through Carhan Upper is a mass path – one of the discreet cross-country tracks rural Catholics used to reach mass in the Penal era. Underfoot it is the most historic part of the walk. The geology is plainer than the older version of this page suggested: the summit is purple mudstone and siltstone of the Valentia Slate Formation, part of the Old Red Sandstone.
The town below punches above its size for history. Cahersiveen was the birthplace of Daniel O’Connell, ‘the Liberator’, and of the poet Sigerson Clifford, whose song The Boys of Barr na Sráide describes the town as ‘the town that climbs the mountain, and looks upon the sea’ – a fair description of the view back down from the slope. The striking Daniel O’Connell Memorial Church in the town was built in 1888, largely paid for by emigrants in the United States.
Wildlife
On the open bog, watch for the Irish mountain hare – a big animal whose Irish name, gearr fia, means ‘short deer’, and one of the longest-established creatures on the island; a hare excavated in County Waterford was dated to more than 28,000 years ago. In the boggy, nutrient-poor ground the carnivorous sundew and butterwort make up the shortfall by trapping insects on their sticky leaves.
After the walk
Cahersiveen is the main town at the western end of the Ring of Kerry and a good base, with a harbour known for deep-sea angling. The cluster of antiquities just outside it is the obvious pairing with the hike: the 15th-century ruins of Ballycarbery Castle and, close by, the two fine drystone ring forts of Cahergal and Leacanabuaile, both dating to around AD 800. In the town itself, the Old Barracks Heritage Centre – an unmistakable building completed in the 1870s to a design meant for a barracks in India – tells the local story.
Pick a clear, settled morning, carry waterproofs and an OS map (Sheet 83), and set off early enough to be on the summit before the afternoon Atlantic wind gets up.