Charming Castle View offers a snug base for the well-heeled mariner

BALTIMORE, repeatedly sacked by pirates, is still regularly colonised from the sea, only this time the swashbucklers are driving RIBs and other powerful motorboats, they wear chic lifejackets and carry nothing more offensive than a razor-sharp platinum credit card.

That, at least, is the superficial image of the boating set, in this most marine-based of all of west Cork’s coastal villages. Only Schull or Kinsale might give Baltimore a run for its marine-generated money.

Its sheltered harbour, in the lee of Carbery’s Hundred Isles, is a mecca for water-borne craft and this house, Castle View is well-placed from which to witness all that activity.