The drive
Priest’s Leap climbs to roughly 463 metres, which makes it the highest paved mountain pass in Munster and one of the few roads in Ireland that comes with a warning attached. It links Coomhola Bridge in County Cork with the village of Bonane in County Kerry: a single-track lane about 13 kilometres long, with a green strip of grass down the centre, patches of loose gravel, and a pitch just north of the summit steep enough to make a first-timer grip the wheel. It is not the main road between the two counties – the wider Kenmare to Bantry road does that job – but it is shorter, and it climbs.
Drive it from the Kerry side, starting at Bonane. The ascent from there has more passing places, and on a road where meeting an oncoming car can mean reversing a long way downhill, that matters. Standard cars and motorbikes manage it in dry, clear weather; the surface and the gradient do the rest.
The legend
The pass is named for a Catholic priest who, chased by soldiers during the Penal Laws, is said to have spurred his horse off the mountain and come down safely near Bantry – three miles away, across the bay, if you take the story at its word. A memorial plaque by the Lidl in Bantry marks where he is meant to have landed, and a rock called Carraig na Gadharaigh, over towards Kenmare, carries hollows said to be the pawmarks of the hounds that chased him. The route itself is genuinely old: it appears on Francis Jobson’s map of Munster in 1589 and turns up as ‘Léim an tSagairt’ in records from 1612.
Walking from the pass
The summit is a jumping-off point for the hills as well as a place to turn the car around. From the top you can strike out for Knockboy (706 m), the highest mountain in County Cork, on a roughly 4.5-kilometre out-and-back over open bog. There is no marked path and no shelter, so treat it as a proper hill walk rather than a stroll from the car – boots, a map, and a look at the forecast first.
Practical information
Crossing the pass is free, and so is the small lay-by at the summit, which holds a couple of cars for a photo stop. There are no toilets, shops or cafés anywhere on the road, and mobile signal drops out in the deeper valleys, so download your maps before you leave the main road. The lane is too narrow for motorhomes, caravans and large campervans – leave them at the bottom.
Mist is the thing to watch. It rolls in off the bay quickly, and when it does the drop-offs disappear from view. If visibility goes, pull into a lay-by and wait rather than press on. The steep sections ice up in winter, so pick a dry, bright day between roughly April and October; outside that, or in any doubt, take the longer Kenmare to Bantry road instead.
Nearby
- Bantry House and gardens – a hillside estate above the bay, with formal terraces and a walled garden.
- Caha Pass – another mountain crossing close by, the tunnelled road between Glengarriff and Kenmare.
- Glengarriff Woods Nature Reserve – oak woodland trails and river walks a short drive south.
- Gougane Barra – a lake and island oratory tucked into the Cork mountains further inland.
- Bonane Heritage Park – stone circles, a ring fort and quiet woodland loops at the Kerry end of the pass.
The whole crossing takes well under an hour, but give it longer. The view worth stopping for is the one back over Bantry Bay from the Cork side of the summit, best in the low light of early morning.