Set sail for Waterford

CLEAR the decks, nail your colours to the mast and check the cut of your jib.

The tall ships are coming to Waterford, and there won’t be a bigger quayside festival this year.

Some 50 grand vessels are setting sail for the Déise, and the city is gearing up to treat some half-a-million festival-goers to a weekend of live music, crews’ parades, funfairs, food villages and fringe festivals before the ships slip away down the River Suir on Sunday, July 3.

Spectacular as they are, however, the Tall Ships only skim the surface of the nautical attractions on offer throughout the southeast. Pick a spot in Passage East, Duncannon or Dunmore East next Sunday morning, watch these elegant ships depart under parade of sail before letting loose in a race to Scotland, and you’ll begin to get a flavour of the coastal quality on offer.

Waterford itself, of course, is the beating heart of it all. The city was founded when Viking raiders sailed their longships up the River Suir in 914AD, a heritage you can dip into at the Waterford Museum of Treasures. Waterford (‘Vadre Fjord’) is actually older than Oslo or Copenhagen.

In 1170, Strongbow followed with a Norman Invasion, famously vowing to take the city ‘by Hook or by Crook’. I’m not sure if Crook Castle still stands, but today, Fáilte Ireland is pushing the Hook peninsula, along with Tramore and Dunmore East, as one of its key ‘family fun’ destinations.

The Hook is a brilliantly blustery outcrop, throwing up not just hidden coves and cliffs as it spikes the Irish Sea, but some great ghost stories too.

Did you know the devil is said to have visited Loftus Hall? Or that pirates buried two tonnes of Spanish milled dollars at Dollar Bay in the 1700s?

Hook Head Safaris (hookheadsafaris.com) is a new company running a four-hour spin around the peninsula, departing at 9am and 2pm from the Clock Tower in Waterford.

It kicks off with the Passage East Ferry, and carries on towards the iconic Hook Lighthouse itself.

Hook Lighthouse (hookheritage.ie) is one of Ireland’s best-known landmarks — a stubby, black-and-white striped canister that has been warning ships off the rocks for some 800 years.

Some 115 steps curl up through the keepers’ quarters towards a 1,000-watt light visible far out to sea, though in a previous era they did it the hard way, fanning the flames with coal. This month, Lonely Planet put the ‘great granddaddy’ of lighthouses at No 1 on its Top 10 flashiest lighthouses.

A half-hour drive from Waterford you’ll find another piece of nautical history in New Ross, albeit this one a replica.

The famine ship Dunbrody (dunbrody.com) is a tall ship permanently anchored on the quays, evoking emigrants’ cramped voyages in search of a new fortune in the US.

Dunbrody’s is a living history tour, with copies of old passenger contracts as tickets, and actors delivering testimonies from steerage and first class. Patrick Kennedy, JFK’s great-grandfather, set sail from these same quays on a wet day in 1848.

You can check an emigration database compiled from the original passenger manifests on the ship’s website.

Back on the south coast, Waterford’s nautical history continues to unfold along the Copper Coast, now a European Geopark. It’s nice to imagine dolphins, whales and leatherback turtles frolicking in the seas offshore here, but the waves mask plenty of treacherous sandbanks and rocks, too.

Hundreds of ships have come a cropper in Tramore Bay — a shallow inlet that looks disconcertingly like the Suir estuary from the sea. Tramore’s most famous wreck was the Seahorse, a military transport ship that foundered in 1816. Some 363 people perished in the tragedy, and the seahorse was subsequently adopted as the logo for Waterford Crystal.

Looking out to sea from Tramore’s sweeping strand, you can make out three stone pillars on the headland to your right, and two on the headland to your left. The Metal Man, a 15-foot sailor, stands atop of one, pointing eastwards to warn passing ships off the deceptive left turn.

“Keep back from me, for I am the Rock of Misery,” is his message.

Tramore is not as tacky as you may think. Sure, it has a very tacky side, but in many ways that’s part and parcel of Irish seaside nostalgia. At any rate, you can leap from a height off the rocks at Guillamene Cove, take a coastal trek with the Flavin family’s Lake Tour stables (laketourstables.ie), or try your hand at land yachting or Nordic Walking with the Tramore Adventure Centre (tramoreadventurecentre.com). Garrarus beach is also good for snorkelling and the T Bay Surf Centre is a mecca for wave-catchers.

From Tramore, the drive out west through Annestown, Bonmahon and Stradbally is like an advertisement for the Tidy Towns competition. Flower baskets, Blue Flag beaches and abandoned copper mines quickly turn a short drive into a day-trip, and you can press on past Dungarvan to the old heritage village of Ardmore, where the 5km cliff loop passes the wreck of a crane ship.

Ardmore boasts a fine Round Tower and is closely linked with St Declan, but it’s not just a heritage gem. It got a major reboot with the arrival of the Michelin-starred Cliff House Hotel, and Ronan O’Connor of Ardmore Adventures (ardmoreadventures.ie) is the go-to guy for snorkelling, rock-climbing, surfing or power-boating along the wild West Waterford Coast.

Further east, local man Tony Gallagher runs cruises up the River Blackwater (blackwatercruises.com), taking 10 guests at a time as he stands barefoot at the helm of his 28-foot half-decker.

Tony fills guests in on all the local lore, from the Knights Templar fortress at Rincrew to Ballynatray House (ballynatray.com) — a Georgian pile with a suite of self-catering accommodation that includes a converted boathouse.

Phew. After all that, you’re going to have an angler’s appetite — and luckily, there’s no shortage of seafood coming off the boats in Kilmore Quay, Dunmore East and Ballycotton.

In Dunmore East, O’Shea’s fish ‘n’ chip shop does fresh cod and chips (€7.50), served with homemade tartar sauce and a lemon wedge. Nearby, you could splash out on the Spinnaker’s signature turf and surf special, marrying a fillet steak with crab claws, prawns and mussels in garlic butter (€27.50). In a nod to the times too, you can bring your own wine for a €5 corkage fee.

At the Cliff House Hotel, the €65 Michelin Star menu is firmly rooted in local produce, with stand-out dishes ranging from Helvick Monkfish to West Cork scallops. Nude Food in Dungarvan twins Frank Hederman’s smoked salmon from Belvelly with chef Louise Clark’s own soda bread (€12).

The tall ships are coming. But you can set sail for the southeast anytime.