I’d happily go back to Baltimore! I liked it’s ‘frontier like’ atmosphere and it’s beautiful setting within such a wild and windswept landscape. It is a large enclosed harbour and has apparently been a historical staging point for shipping crossing the Atlantic or heading south towards the continued from Ireland. We are clearly ahead of the tourist season so it’s character will probably be very different by July but the few bars and restaurants we visited were well patronised by locals and the craic was good! That said there was evidence of a few D4 types (see my previous blog!) who were probably down for the weekend or living an alternate or working from home lifestyle!
We were keen to top up with water and fuel but there was no obvious berth on the pier that we could use so we headed off through some of the narrow, inter-island channels early on Saturday morning. Careful navigation is needed but the area is stunning, narrow waterways between islands with small stone crofts (some clearly ‘done up’), small farms and names like Roaring Water Bay and Lot’s Wife.
The ‘magic’ of the area was slightly moderated by some extensive fish farming areas that we needed to carefully avoid; these are mussel farms with the mussels growing either in rafts or on strings suspended beneath buoys.
After a quick lunch on a buoy in Schull we headed for our overnight stop in Crookhaven. Another mooring in a narrow but sheltered inlet. There was one visiting yacht on a buoy (we had seen them in Kinsale) but otherwise it was quiet until the arrival of a Customs launch and their associated inspection team that visited us by rib and inspected our documents. We were asked if we were carrying drugs, no we said – the response was “everybody says that!” But the visit was apparently successful and they went on their way and we were free to proceed ashore. Yet another beautiful spot with a great walk up onto the cliffs of Bolt Head, the most southerly point on the Irish mainland and a location that we learnt was fundamental to the development of radio communications – Marconi established a base station here to prove communications across the Atlantic.
So a peaceful night on a buoy just off a very pleasant bar, O’Sullivans, with an animated local crowd watching Leinster v Munster on the TV in the Irish rugby championship.. they were successfully drowning their sorrows as Munster lost!
I really enjoyed this area. With a small boat you could spend a very long time exploring the islands and channels and there are enough friendly pubs to keep you sustained! We reckon the nature of the area may be very different in the height of the summer but just now it’s all very quiet and peaceful.
