Beaches in Ireland

Three thousand kilometres of Atlantic coastline, green, indented and almost entirely undeveloped by Mediterranean standards. The west from Donegal to Cork holds the beaches — pale shell sand in coves under cliffs, linked by the Wild Atlantic Way along a driving route of some twenty-five hundred kilometres. Achill Island in Mayo has the most dramatic of them, at the end of a road cut into a mountain, and Keem there lost and regained its sand within living memory. Inch Strand in Kerry runs five kilometres and can be driven on; the Aran Islands off Galway have limestone pavement to the water and a sheltered beach at Kilmurvey. The far north-west holds the machair grassland that grows on shell sand and exists almost nowhere else in Europe outside Ireland and the Hebrides. The water is cold, around fourteen degrees at best, and a year-round sea swimming culture exists regardless and has grown substantially, with changing shelters and Christmas swims to go with it. Practically: lifeguard cover is seasonal and limited to Blue Flag beaches, so everywhere else is unsupervised; the weather changes within the hour, which is why the light is what photographers come for; and the season for swimming without a wetsuit is July and August at a stretch.