Posts Tagged With: coast

An Ancient Coast and 5,000 years of Irish history. Maghery in Beautiful Donegal.

Posted on October 11, 2018 by singersong

One of the things I love about touring in Ireland is that you find so much to enjoy in the most unheralded and remote corner of of the country. You don’t need to join the throngs of visitors kissing stones, ticking boxes and visiting interpretive centres to enjoy the ‘real’ Ireland.

Take the village of Maghery in the the area know as The Rosses near Dungloe in west Donegal.

What drew me there was a sunny Donegal Saturdayin late autumn and a vague knowledge of some sea arches at nearby Crohy Point, a spot favoured by photographers.

Clohy Sea Arches

But I found far more.

Yes there was the Bristi Stack and the Clohy Sea Arches. Unique land forms such as these are found dotted up and down the Irish coastline. It was easy enough to find the location along a scary single lane cliff road. And I mean scary; you have no choice but to rely on the other driver to be doing the right thing.

The Clohy Sea Arches are marked on GoogleMaps but not on the ground. Clearly they don’t want people stopping. There is space for two cars to park on the verge and you can’t actually see the rock formations from the road. Feeling that sense of welcome provided by a locked farm gate you climb it and follow a track that leads toward the coast and down the hill where you get your first look at the unusual triangular arch.

Panoramic view of Clohy Sea Arches

The Bristi Sea Stack

Nestled in a small bay it is accompanied by a number of pinnacles which are the remains of similar collapsed arches. There is another quite different arch attached to the mainland at the other end of the bay where the rocks are dragged into near vertical by a fault which has since eroded out.

Natural bridge formed by erosion of fault fill material

The Bristi stack was first climbed by professional sea stack climber Iain Miller in 2011. If you are contemplating it you need ropes, a dinghy to get there, amazing skill and a whole lot of heart. Not for me but have a look at this video on climbing Bristi Sea Stack

That’s Iain Miller stands on Bristi Sea Stack. Unknown photographer. Unknown date

For more sedate pleasures I drove back to the village. Past the 1804 Signal Tower, like many others that dot dozens of remote headlands and islands along the west coast of Ireland. Built to give warning of an impending invasion by Napoleon. This one looks to be in excellent condition. I wasn’t up to the hill walk to get there this day. Thanks be to long lenses.

View in the vicinity of Maghery. Napoleonic signal tower.

Napoleonic signal tower

The village itself lies adjacent to a beautiful wide sandy strand. This Saturday it was empty except for the local equestrian group practicing their show jumping in this idyllic location. Happy horses indeed.

Maghery nestled in the bay

Practicing show jumping on the beach at Maghery

Hand painted signs on slate placed by the roadside led me to other points of interest. There is an impressive stone circle just north of the village. Again you are left to your own devices; there is no marker on the ground and no directions as to how to get there. Twenty metres in diameter and a bit overgrown but some diligent searching found this 4-5,000 year old monument. These circles are very rare in west Donegal, I believe.

Termon Stone Circle

From here you get a sense of that Donegal wildness as you look to the north east across Dungloe Bay towards Mt Errigal 23 km away on the horizon.

View across Dungloe Bay to Mt Errigal

Nearby is Termon House built in late 18th century and once owned by the local clergy sits on its own glorious beach. It is available as a luxury holiday rental.

Adjacent to the house are some impressive walls built as work relief for those affected by the famine of 1847. Hence ‘Famine Walls’. Apparently the government refused to support the then landowner who ended up footing the £1,500 cost of paying his labourers 1d a day to build the wall. Beautifully constructed though they remain standing 170 years later.

The afternoon was closing in and I could hear the ringing sounds of twenty fiddles filling my head with mazurkas and schottisches so it was time to return to Glenties. I was well satisfied with this little village that delivered a slice of Donegal’s wild coastal scenery and its human history of over 5,000 years.

Categories: Real Ireland, Wild Ireland | Tags: bay, beach, Bristi, Clohy, coast, coastline, Donegal, equestrian, Famine, famine walls, history, horses, Ireland, Maghery, Napoleon, photography, sea, sea arches, Sea stack, showjumping, signal tower, stone circle, Termon, Termon House, Termon stone circle, The Rosses, travel, wild, Wild Atlantic Way | Leave a comment

Sampson Island at Loop Head, Co Clare; You’ve probably never heard of it.

Posted on August 3, 2018 by singersong

Loop Head is only an hour away from my house near Quilty. It is one of my favourite places to take visitors no matter what the weather. So serene and dramatic when it is calm; wild and scary in the wind and rain. If you have been following this blog you will have seen my earlier posts and photographs. Spectacular cliffs displaying contorted folded sediments, rock arches and caves, a lighthouse, dolphins and in the distance the mountains of Kerry.

Contorted rocks in the cliffs north of Loop Head

There is a rocky island at the end of the headland which looks like it was sliced off with a giant knife. It is mad with breeding sea birds through the summer. The picture below was taken in May and shows just a few early arrivals, taking up prime spots. A deep and treacherous chasm separates it from mainland Clare. As you would imagine, much mystery and legend surrounds this place.

The island is popularly known by some as Diarmuid and Grainne’s Rock, one of many places in island that reference the famous Irish legend of the love triangle between Fionn Mac Cumhail, his warrior friend Diarmuid and a girl named Gráinne.

The gap to the island is also known as Cú Chulainn’s Leap. And that’s another interesting story in its own right. Here is the short version.

Cú Chulainn was an ancient Gaelic hero warrior gifted with superhuman strength, speed and skill. He was leader of The Red Branch Knights, who in ancient times would be fighting battles, protecting the folk of Ulster from invaders. He would, however, often go travelling. On one of those trips, he met a ‘cailleach’, translated variously as a wise woman or a ‘hag’. Her name was Mal. She fancied him and as she had magic powers with which she could ensnare anyone she touched, he took flight.

She chased him all over Ireland eventually following him to this remote promontory in west Clare. He leaped across the channel to the island but she was fairly athletic as well and was able to follow. Still desperate to avoid her he hopped back to the mainland. She continued to give chase but she didn’t quite make it slipping on the edge and and ending up in the ocean below. Three days later her head washed up at what became known as Hag’s Head and nine days later her remains came ashore at Quilty. The bay here took the name Mal Bay (hence Miltown Malbay) and the site of the jump became Leap Head or later Loop Head.

All fascinating but I digress.

At the end of April with Spring desperately trying to make an appearance I paid yet another visit. Isn’t it amazing that you can walk past a spot a dozen times and just not realise the significance of what you are seeing? Well this day I noticed on the cliff edge two metal spikes fixed into the rock and a neat wall and some stone construction above them, including a large stone lined hole. It all was heavily disguised by the soft spongy grass and the newly budding sea thrift.

Two Iron spikes fixed into the cliff and a stone wall and hole above.

Looking from the north to the south

I was intrigued. My first guess was that it was evidence of a former bridge. Perhaps a rope bridge like Carrick-a-Rede, I thought. But why? And in any case, hard as I looked I could see no works on the other side of the island which I would have expected. It remained a mystery but unsatisfied I resorted to Google later that evening.

It didn’t take long to find this truly amazing photo in the archives of the National Library of Ireland.

Viewing Platform Sampson Island. c1905

What I was seeing was in fact the remains of the foundation of this viewing platform. The photo is dated at c1905. and reveals a lot. You can see a sign on the Island that says ‘Sampson Island’ and proffers a date in the 1830s suggesting a landing then.

Detail of above photo showing sign and shelter.

Did Sampson stake a claim to the island? There is also evidence of a small shelter. Further the people on the lookout are identified by researchers as members of the Sampson family. But really it is all speculation. Why build this elaborate and hair-raising construction and how did they actually get across to put up the sign? Why even bother naming it?

Then I saw another image. God knows how the photographer got this angle

Crossing to Sampson Island?

That is one very brave woman in that sling. I am not exactly sure what is going on but it is possible that this was how they got across. There’s quite a crowd waiting to try. Perhaps Mal would have been better off to wait for the Sampsons to build this before attempting the crossing.

With Ireland’s long and convoluted history it is common to come across these hidden stories for which only scant evidence remains. Sometimes though you have to look very hard. Next time you visit Loop Head have a look for it. It’s close to the edge though so take care lest you end up like poor old Mal.

Loop Head lighthouse with the sea pink just starting to bloom

Categories: My Journey, Wild Ireland | Tags: Cú Chulainn, Cú Chulainn's Leap, Clare, Cliffs, coast, Cuchulain, Hag's Head, Ireland, lighthouse, Loop Head, Mal, Munster, photography, Sampson Island, Sampson's Island, travel, viewing platform, views, West Clare, Wild Atlantic Way | 2 Comments

The Flaggy Shore and Aughinish. Make the time.

Posted on October 19, 2017 by singersong

Just a short distance off the N67 which tracks the northern coast of Clare as part of the Wild Atlantic Way is the Flaggy Shore. This is the perfect spot to see the Burren meet the Bay, in this case Galway Bay. A sweeping stony shoreline with a backdrop of the bare purple hills and the lush green fields beneath.

Look north across the bay, now calm and peaceful and you see the villages of Galway clinging to the coast and beyond this the misty silhouette of Connemara and the Twelve Pins.

Cliffs of Aughinish in the foreground and the Twelve Pins on the horizon

The place has a permanent spot in Ireland’s psyche thanks to one of Seamus Heaney’s most celebrated poems, Postscript.

And some time make the time to drive out west
Into County Clare, along the Flaggy Shore,
In September or October, when the wind
And the light are working off each other ……

Heaney in describing how the poem came to him said: “I had this quick sidelong glimpse of something flying past; before I knew where I was, I went after it”.

He has said it beautifully of course so I won’t try and improve on those words. All I can do is attempt to give that feeling in pictures…

There is no beach, as such, at Flaggy Shore. Just boulders, pebbles and rocky outcrops. But a walk on the strand will well reward. You can stroll along the roadway or explore the limestone platform in the littoral zone.

This is the best place in the whole of Clare to observe the coral fossils that make up such a large part of the 350 million year old layers. Huge colonies of branching corals (fasciculate lithostrotionids) are sliced at various angles revealing themselves from all perspectives. Their true branching form can be seen often in section on the rock face. Sometimes the colonies seem completely intact and measure over a metre across. If you have been to the Great Barrier Reef in Queensland it is easy to imagine the warm shallow sea that was once home to these corals and the teeming life that surrounded them.

Planar sectional view through a coral colony

Large fossil coral colonies on the rock platform

Excellent view of coral colony showing branching and dendritic form. About a metre across.

If you look hard you will see long straight grooves etched into the rock. These are called striations and are caused by the movement of a glacier which smoothed this landscape around 10,000 years ago. Rocks trapped in the ice were dragged along the bottom scouring these cracks. We are able to measure the direction of movement of the ice sheet using this evidence.

Glacial striations on the rock platform at Flaggy Shore

If you like watching sea birds, you are in the right place. As well as gulls, this time of the year starlings gather in flocks and search for food on the sea shore. These murmurations can number thousands of birds and when performing their acrobatic gyrations they make one of the truly spectacular sights in nature. They swoop and soar and flit and glide in perfect concert. It’s only when you freeze this motion with the camera that you see how perfectly aligned is the movement of each individual bird. I could watch them for hours.

Starlings I

Starlings II

Eyes left

Eyes right

Aughinish Island, just a few hundred metres across the calm water, is comprised of glacial deposits left behind by the retreating ice as the continent warmed. The Island was originally part of the mainland but a devastating tsunami caused by an earthquake in Portugal in 1755 separated it. The British built a causeway in 1811 to service the troops manning the Martello Tower (built to protect Ireland from Napoleon). It is still the only access to the Island. The one lane causeway actually connects Aughinsh to County Galway which paradoxically means the fifty residents on the island and the occasional vistor who stumbles on this place must travel through Galway to get access to this part of Clare.

The causeway built to access Auginish

Peace I

Peace II

Peace III

For the ‘tourist’ looking for a quick fix there is not much to take you to Aughinish. But it is a place to walk and breathe. Where the quiet ambience is tangible. It has a feeling of calm so unusual for the Atlantic Coast. You will be unlikely to meet anyone except a farmer attending to his boggy field or another collecting seaweed blown in by Hurricane Ophelia. But you will get stunning views across the inlet and if you are lucky enough to see the sun disappear behind Black Head you may not want to leave.