Free for everyone; an open-air monument with no staff, tickets or booking. No membership card is needed.
The Trust's page does not say how parking is charged.
OPW names no car park; Sport Ireland names Ballinskelligs Beach car park as the start of the Skellig Monks Trail, which runs along the shore to the abbey, and reviewers advise using it because the lane to the abbey has room for only two to four cars. No tariff or free statement is published for the beach car park, which has toilets, a cafe and a playground that are not OPW's. OPW names no bus service.
Driving pin: Ballinskelligs Beach car park, 611 m north of OPW's own pin on the priory.
Ballinskelligs Abbey, the Priory of the Arroasian Canons of the Order of St Augustine, sits on the shore of Ballinskelligs Bay at the edge of the Iveragh Peninsula in south Kerry, with the world-famous Sceilg Mhichíl lying off the coast. It was founded in 1210 by Augustinian canons from Rattoo in north Kerry to house the Skellig monks, for whom Viking raids, a colder climate and church reform had made island life too hazardous. The priory remained in use until 1569 and was abandoned in 1578 under Elizabeth I's reformation. Centuries of coastal erosion demolished parts of the buildings and graveyard before a sea wall was built to protect them; what survives shows detail from the thirteenth to the fifteenth centuries, with the church and its bellcote, the prior's house, the refectory and the cloister. The ruins are free and open at all hours, best reached by the ten-minute dune walk from the beach car park on the Skellig Monks Trail.
An unguided open-air national monument in state guardianship with no published hours, no staff and no facilities. OPW warns that care and caution should be kept throughout a visit to its unguided sites.
The graveyard is still in use, so be respectful; the ground is uneven with architectural fragments in the nave. Toilets, a cafe and a playground are at the beach car park, not at the abbey.
Dogs: Dogs are allowed on a lead on the Skellig Monks Trail from the beach car park past the abbey.
Photo: Aerial view of Ballinskelligs Priory's ruined church and buildings in their walled graveyard, protected from the bay by a long sea wall. Kmcnamee, CC BY-SA 4.0. Source: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Ballinskelligs_Priory.jpg. Licence: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0. Resized and cropped for display; derivatives retain the source licence.
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Dogs, with restrictions
An easy 2.3 km loop of about an hour with 30 m of ascent, red arrows on white, from Ballinskelligs Beach car park along the shore and dunes to the abbey and back by the road, passing the castle on Ballinskelligs Point; free; dogs on a lead.
