If ever an island were misnamed it must be the small Cow island which lies 2.5km off Dursey Head on the Beara Peninsula.

It is probably the strangest method ever devised for establishing a sea border anywhere in the world.

Observed mistily above the Sherkin hills from the Beacon at Baltimore, Cape Clear is an enticing island and by far the largest in Roaringwater Bay, writes Dan MacCarthy

FOR much longer than millennia, islands have been a source of intrigue, writes Dan MacCarthy. Someone gazes out from the mainland wondering: “What is out there?”