Caesar Otway 1780-1842 was a Minister and publisher among others of William Carleton  and co-operated with George Petrie in the first edition of  the Dublin Penny Journal.  They published an article about a journey to Durrus:

https://durrushistory.wordpress.com/wp-admin/post.php?post=373&action=edit

This account is from The Grand Tour of Cork by Cornelius Kelly, Cailleach Books, 2003.

I proceeded to take my leave of Skull…on my way to Bantry I passed the dark and lofty Mount Gabriel to the left, and took my dreary way over a comfortless tract of country, the peninsula of Ivaugh, the ancient territory of O’Mahony Fune; princes these O’Mahonys were of bogs and rocks enough: here the tribe of the O’Mahonys has contrived to increase and multiply, and has replenished these wastes with Paddies, pigs, and potatoes.  Let no one say after looking at these moors, studded over with cabins, and those cabins crowded with children, pigs, goats, cocks and hens, that a poor Irishman is not an industrious creature.  No; look at that string of men, women, boys and girls, toiling up the mountainside with sea-weed and sea-sand, in baskets on their backs.  See them reclaiming, from amidst bogs, patches of ground on which to cultivate their only food, the potato; and no one witnessing the struggle of human industry against nature, but must acknowledge the Irish can be industrious.

As he comes over the crest and onto Dunmanus Bay he observes ‘a druidical circle comprised of a number of upright rocks and at a short distance from the circle are two upright pillars of stone, somewhat like obelisks, about fifteen feet high’

‘Before we hurry on , let me interest you my Protestant reader, in the condition of the poor Protestants of this south-western district of the county of Cork, planted here originally by the piety of the Boyles and other undertakers in the plantation of Munster.  The encouragement, the increase, the cherishing of this Protestant yeomanry formed the pride and honest boast of a Boyle, a Cox, or a Carew’.

Before the Barytes Mine was built in 1840 with a new road from Dunbeacon to Mount Gabriel the people had to scramble up the hills along gullys with sea sand, this is dealt with here:
https://durrushistory.wordpress.com/2011/10/08/baryte-mines/