Keem Bay

Keem is at the western end of Achill Island in County Mayo, the largest island off Ireland and connected to the mainland by a bridge. The beach sits in a horseshoe bay enclosed by Croaghaun mountain on one side and Moyteoge Head on the other, at the end of a road cut into the cliff face.

The approach is half of it. The road climbs and turns along the cliff with the bay appearing below, and the arrival is the reason the place appears in car advertisements and, since 2022, in a widely seen film. Above the beach stands a disused coastguard lookout, and on the slopes are the remains of a booley village — seasonal summer dwellings used for grazing, abandoned within the last century.

The beach is pale sand in sheltered water, unusually calm for the Atlantic coast because the bay faces south into the lee of the headlands. The water is clear and cold, around 14°C at best. Basking sharks pass through in early summer, and until the 1950s this bay held a commercial basking shark fishery, run from the beach with nets set across the mouth.

There is a small car park at the top, which fills quickly, and nothing else. No shop, no lifeguard outside a short summer window, no shelter. Achill has villages, but Keem itself has nothing on it. Croaghaun rises directly behind the bay and its northern face is among the highest sea cliffs in Europe, over six hundred metres and reachable only on foot; almost nobody who visits the beach goes up, which is why it stays empty.

A road cut into a mountain, a horseshoe of sand at the end of it, and Croaghaun's cliffs behind — six hundred metres, among the highest in Europe, and almost nobody walks up them. The water is fourteen degrees at best. Go early in July, because the car park has been full since nine.