Have a swimming time at a Cape Clear island retreat

WHO buys houses on islands? Well, active, outdoors types for one.

The restorer and now vendor of Tig Neill on Cape Clear, John Kearney, was never going to be stuck for a way to get to his family’s well-serviced island base – he’s even swum out to the island, through some Ireland’s most treacherous currents.

That seven mile swim – from Baltimore out past Sherkin Island to Cape Clear – took a gruelling five hours, but he got a just reward. While staying on Cape to recover, he met Vivienne Ring who was working there in a B&B for the summer. Love blossomed, businesses grew and marriage followed and they expect their third child next month.

A former navy diver, John Kearney spent his childhood at the water’s edge in Baltimore, west Cork, where he clearly developed a love of the sea and all things maritime. He’s come close to swimming the English channel – and will try again – and has even swum around the Fastnet rock as part of his sea training.

That salt-in-the-blood thing has stuck with him since childhood and now his main business is running a diving and water sports business, Baltimore Diving Centre.

But, despite all toes dipped in the ocean, he’s also a different sort of high-flier. He is a trained pilot since the 1990s, rated to fly jets of 737 size, is a volunteer lifeboat crew member and he and his wife, a practicing solicitor, also opened a fish and chip shop in Baltimore, appropriately called Cape Cod, serving only locally caught fish.

Keenly committed to the locality and its tourism attractions (campaigns include saving the Baltimore hotel pool from closure, and setting up a medical rapid response service for west Cork), John ran in the local elections in May, and got a respectable 900 votes as an independent.

He has also dabbled in property with a handful of A-rated houses coming to completion in Skibbereen. but before they hit the market he has chosen to sell a more personal project, Tig Neill on Cape Clear.

This is a fully-restored 19th century five-bed house, previously owned by continentals and considerably and sensitively upgraded over the past two years by John and Vivienne, who’ve enjoyed it with their two children, aged five and seven. Despite having a third child on the way, John says the house is too big for them and he has put it up for sale with Clonakilty agent Henry O’Leary, with a realistic €295,000 asking price.

Views are towards the mainland and Schull, taking in the Mizen to windmills by Drimoleague.

“We wanted to have some ongoing connection with Cape, that’s why we did up the house, but we’ll build again, probably something smaller. It’s so peaceful out there, very special,” says John.

The good news for prospective buyers is that apart from its sheer beauty, Cape Clear is one of the more accessible islands, with a regular ferry service to Baltimore and Schull.

Swimming there is optional.