Rossbeigh Strand

The spit at Rossbeigh projects from the southern shore of Dingle Bay, a not quite symmetric counterpart to Inch Spit on the north side. It is oriented to meet the waves coming into the bay from the west, although maybe not oriented quite well enough, since parts of this beach have suffered some significant erosion during storms.

AERIAL VIEW

Aside from the rock revetment along the southern end of the spit, Rossbeigh's wide sandy beach is backed by a cobble berm and dunes. At least from my limited view, it didn't look like Inch Beach had the same sort of cobble berm, suggesting some significant geologic differences between the two spits, both in terms of their formation and of the geologic materials from which they were built.

Inch Beach

Castlemaine Harbour, at the head of Dingle Bay, is separated from the outer part of the bay by two opposing spits: Inch Spit, on the north, and Rossbeigh Strand, on the south. There is actually another feature, likely an older spit, east of Rossbeigh at Cromane. The aerial view shows this all very nicely.

AERIAL VIEW

Inch Spit extends south out into the bay from the Dingle Peninsula. The sandy spit contrasts with the rock coastline of the peninsula itself. Waves coming into the bay from the west graze the shallower water along the shore and there was a long train of waves wrapping into the corner at the base of the spit.

We didn't stop long - just a quick view. Our next stop would be at its southern counterpart, on the other side of the bay.

Minard Castle

Minard Castle has been hanging on a thread ever since Oliver Cromwell's men blew up its foundations (and it's occupants, too) in 1650.

AERIAL VIEW

The beach has been hanging on much longer than that. Boulders, originally excavated from the Old Red Sandstone of the surrounding cliffs, have been rounded and built into a spectacular storm berm. Beal na gCloc is Gaelic for Bay of Stones.

There's some great imagery of the beach as well as history of the castle at Voices from the Dawn.

This beach is located a few miles southeast of Dingle at the head of Kilmurry Bay. It would fun to see it, from a safe distance, in the midst of a good Atlantic gale riding on a king tide. You could probably measure the movement of the beach cobbles with a geophones or a seismometer!

Clogher Beach

We're still near the western end of the Dingle Peninsula. This pocket beach is confined between rocky cliffs of Silurian silts and sands (just slightly older then the Dingle Group at Coumeenoole). I suppose this is what gives rise to the green and red stones on the beach.

AERIAL VIEW

Behind the beach is a low eroding bluff of soil and rock (glacial drift?), which resulted in an interesting berm of weathered material and beach cobble. The parking lot and beach access was shored up with a rock wall of reddish stone, which I assume came from very close by, although it looked a little Devonian to me!

Coumeenoole Strand

Coumeenoole Beach is located just north of Slea Head, at the western end of the Dingle Peninsula. This is a fascinating landscape, with stone walls marching high up the steep hills and jagged rocks extending offshore. It might have been more fascinating had our early September visit not been on so gray a day - although I suspect that's pretty common.

Coomeenoule is a large pocket beach, extending across the strike of steeply dipping sedimentary units, which jut out across the upper beach.  The AERIAL VIEW shows this much better than my photographs. 

Whether this is a strand or a beach sort of depends on the tide (and whether one has strong feelings about the difference between the terms "strand" and "beach"). On lower tides, the lower beach extends across the entire end of the cove, but when the water is higher (like during our visit), only the westernmost segment is exposed.

Even this part would be hard to get to were it not for a road that winds down to the water (most people park above, but some folks insisted on driving all the way down).

I believe these rocks all belong to the lower Devonian Dingle Group, which is part of, or closely associated with, the old Red Sandstone - one of Europe's more famous rock formations.

Doughmore Beach

Doughmore Beach (also Doonbeg Beach) is a long sandy barrier beach with a cobble berm and a large dune field. Apparently, it is one of western Clare's better known surfing spots.

AERIAL VIEW

A recurring theme of some of these Irish posts is that not only are golf courses often built among the dunes, but the term "links" is actually an Irish word that derives from this geographic association.

Doonbeg is a great example, with a major golf course landscaped into the dunes, sometimes pretty close to the beach. Unfortunately beaches move around, more readily than greens and fairways, so when a big storm a couple of years ago took some chunks out of the frontal dune, the owners thought that dumping large rock along two miles of beach would be cheaper and easier than modifying their golf course.

Until a few years ago, this was the Doonbeg Golf Club and The Lodge at Doonbeg, but it's been recently acquired by a large American real estate developer, who's updated the place and given it a name that more closely reflects the personality of the owner than its original history and geography.

Interestingly, the new owner believes quite strongly that building walls can solve complex problems. In this case, the new owner also began building the wall without seeking permission from the local authorities. Which ruffled some feathers and shut down the project, at least for the time being.

There are no shortage of articles about the recent history at Doonbeg, but this one in the European edition of Politico (July 2016) starts with a really nice picture of the beach!

Spanish Point

We're still on the western edge of County Clare, but are moving south from the Burren and the Cliffs of Moher. I'm not posting pictures of Lehinch, since my photos of the beach were pretty bleak, but it was clear that Lehinch was a big surfing spot. Surf shops and surf schools and a lot of surfers waiting for waves that, at least the day we passed through, weren't very big.

AERIAL VIEW

We made a quick stop at this beach on the south side of Spanish Point. I loved the broad cobble berm of dark rock and the contrasting red sandy beach. The tilting sandstone ledges are the same Paleozoic sediments we saw at the Cliffs of Moher - still dipping south.

Cliffs of Moher

The coast of Ireland has many spectacular seacliffs, but these are probably the best known and the most visited. The Giant's Causeway in Northern Ireland is in the same category, but the draw there is the textured basalt platform, not the seacliffs themselves!

AERIAL VIEW

The southward dipping shale and sandstone layers that make up these cliffs are Carbon-iferous, a little more than 320 million years old, and overlie the slightly older limestones of the Burren (below). Whereas the limestones represent deep water conditions, these sediments reflect shallower deltaic environments.

The vertical cliffs here rise 500-600' from the ocean and there's little opportunity for beaches. On the other hand, if the cliffs and the narrow platform are aligned properly, and the adjacent shoreline creates a confining pocket, one can still get beaches. Just not easy beaches to actually visit.

Salthill Prom

Salthill is in the western part of the City of Galway, right along the shore of Galway Bay. It's Galway's beach neighborhood - swimming, amusements, restaurants, hotels, and a walk along the seawall. It was busy, but not crowded, on a gray Sunday afternoon in early September. It was almost empty on Monday morning. The low tide photos are Sunday; the high tide photos are Monday.

The beaches along here were probably pretty confused even before the riprap and the groins and the promenade. This is a low relief rocky landscape, irregularly mantled with glacial material (more drumlins?). The beaches have formed where waves and available sediment are favorable, leaving an incredibly patchy mosaic of rock, gravel, sand, and water.

AERIAL VIEW

The most robust beaches appeared to be the coarse gravel berms west of the Blackrock Pier. Along the Prom, the beaches are sparse and compartmentalized into sand or gravel pockets between groins or natural rocky ledges. Where sediment is abundant and beaches are wide, a modest seawall is all that is necessary to protect the sidewalk. But where the beaches are absent, remarkably high rock revetments extend to fairly low tides.

The Blackrock Diving Pier is an iconic feature of the Salthill Prom (I read that there are plans to rehabilitate it). The tide range is several meters here, making diving possible at high tide. Buoys marked swimming lanes offshore and there were plenty of folks in the water both days.

On a more geologic note, I'd like to point out the Pangaea Coffee Bar. Sunday afternoon there was a line and I wasn't paying attention. Monday morning the place was shuttered, and so I lost out on an opportunity to combine beaches, geology, and coffee.

Dog's Bay

Dog's Bay is the site of a neat tombolo two miles south of Roundstone. The sandy isthmus has beaches on both sides and is wide enough to support dunes down the middle. We wandered out the beach on the western side (I think this side is technically the Dog's Bay side), but were chased back to the car by a squall.

AERIAL VIEW

Double-sided tombolos are often assymetric, often reflecting different wave regimes on each side. It seemed to me that the beach on the western side was wider (less steep) than the one on the east. Even the color of the sand looked different, redder on the east, whiter on the west. This could be real (perhaps a difference in the sediment source or subsequent winnowing) or just a trick of the light. And the east beach had a cemetery.

We  visited several beaches during our two days in Clifden, but this was the only one that merited posting. There were interesting beaches scattered along the shoreline near Cleggan, each quite different, but none that stood out and given the overcast weather, few that generated good photos. We looked across the sandy channel to Omey Island, but decided against driving across (although the low tide crossing was clearly marked). And I would have loved to explore the shoreline west of Ballyconneely, but it might have been tough to see through the downpour.

Beaches weren't the only thing to see in the area and there are a lot of pictures on my hshipman blog (e.g. Clifden, Connemara, Bog Road, Sky Road, and a couple of others).