Campaigners in West Cork are stepping up their efforts to have a picturesque peninsula parish included on the Wild Atlantic Way route.

THE Wild Atlantic Way tourism initiative is obviously a success, well planned and executed, paying dividends to the geographically marginalised communities through which it passes, writes Damien Enright.

Tragedy was averted off Cork last night when three fisherman were rescued as their trawler began to sink.

A dead dolphin at Broadstrand, Seven Heads, West Cork, carried in on a high tide and now above the tideline, so not likely to be carried out again. It’s a big animal, rotund and heavy. It’s on a popular walking route: what’s to be done?

IN THESE days of slate-hopping downpours, I sometimes wonder if the heron standing on our balcony is simply brainless or if it revels in the weather. It makes no attempt to find shelter.

THE soldier stones that top the seashore wall for a kilometre or more from the east to the west end of this village are draped with the red stems and tiny purple flowers of ivy-leaved toadflax. If a lady could lift off this lacery of plant life and drape it on her shoulders, she would, it is sure, be wearing a shawl better than any designed by the top couturiers.

IT’S SUMMER again, whatever Met Éireann may say about it beginning in June. 

FOR a superb outdoor experience, salted with a bit of history, none will serve better on this Bank Holiday Monday than a coastal walk from picturesque Courtmacsherry village to Coolbawn (aka Blind Strand) on the Seven Heads.

A dog stranded on cliffs was one of three weekend callouts dealt with successfully by a West Cork lifeboat in 24 hours.

MY COLUMN of February 16 discussed the mysterious moss balls photographed on a west Cork strand by M Didier Le Goff, a Breton visitor. 

GALLARUS AND KILMALKEDAR, DINGLE

A hound was happy to fall into step with me on a recent walk — and to share some of the blackberries I paused to pick along the way.

Very few Irish destinations have had the dramatic history of Kinsale. Dan McCarthy looks at the history of the town, from the maritime to

Birdwatching amid the sands and a silver sea

OUR trailhead is Howe Strand, where a few cars can park but space is limited. The beach looks out onto Courtmacsherry Bay and beyond it, the open ocean. Westward are the Seven Heads, and to the east, the Old Head of Kinsale.

I’m researching the Cardiff Hall shipwreck, which was lost on the Shoonta Rock, at the Seven Heads, in 1925.

The lifeboat station which responded to the sinking of the Lusitania has appealed for artifacts to feature in a major exhibition to commemorate the centenary of her sinking off Cork in 1915.

MINKE whales galore off the Seven Heads, the Old Head of Kinsale and everywhere along the south coast.

The cliffs of the Seven Heads in west Cork are garnished with confections of sea pinks in full bloom, blankets of yellow kidney vetch and mantles of golden bird’s-foot trefoil.

We view a selection of trading up homes from around the country.

He’s normally grilling politicians on the top news stories of the day.

Two people have been rescued from a 35-foot yacht off the coast of Co Cork after a fire broke out aboard the vessel.

I FOUND my first field mushrooms of the year on Jul 1 on a cliff top on the Seven Heads in west Cork, fine robust specimens, fist-sized, fresh and shining, with no worm damage whatsoever.

A fishing boat with two crew on board has been rescued off the coast of West Cork.

A fishing vessel, which starting taking on water off the coast of west Cork, is now being towed back to port.

A rescue operation is underway after a fishing vessel got into difficulty off the coast of west Cork.

Symbolic fires blazed on headlands and islands along the Cork coast last night marking a timeline of the Titanic’s ill-fated maiden voyage across the Atlantic a century ago.

I CAN only hope the extraordinary weather of last week has continued into this one.

Providence Resources has found gas at its Barryroe asset off the Cork coast, just a week after hitting oil in the same area.

Four men have been rescued from a fishing vessel off the coast of west Cork.

BATS were flitting through the trees as I watched a group of aging Europeans with serious cases of waist-slippage drink Angkor beer and dine on slim frogs at a pavement restaurant by the riverside in Phnom Penh, Cambodia.

ALONG the south west coast, this is the seal-pupping season.

OIL company Petrel has renewed its interest in offshore drilling on foot of revised Government incentives for commercial exploration.

LAST Sunday week was Flying Ant Day on the Seven Heads of west Cork.

MORE often than not, this summer, we wake to skies as peerless blue as a hedge sparrow’s egg.

ENERGY giant PSE Kinsale Energy has launched a major feasibility study into the development of a €500 million natural gas storage complex of strategic national importance.

IT is difficult for the self-employed to stay indoors these days when the sky is blue and the world outside bathed in sunlight, and there is – even! – warmth in sheltered corners so that one could close one’s eyes and think one is on the Mediterranean.

AS Alice in Wonderland said, things gets “curiouser and curioser” and she was “so much surprised, that for the moment she quite forgot how to speak good English”.

A STRETCH in the evenings and with it nature, although a little late, is busy again.

LAST week, in glorious weather, we walked the headlands of west Cork. On Three Castles Head, beyond Barley Cove, we found lizards basking on the walls of the collapsed 15th century bawn, golden lizards, sharp-eyed and fast, disappearing between the stones at the hint of a footfall or shadow.

PROVIDENCE Resources’ chief executive Tony O’Reilly Jnr has said he is confident in the exploration company’s share price belatedly gaining momentum in the wake of it finalising its move into the potentially lucrative gas storage and trading market.

Exploration company Providence (via its subsidiary Eirgas) has exercised its option to acquire a 40% stake in a group of assets centred on the Kinsale Head gas field from Labuan Energy, a subsidiary of Petronas.