Islands of Ireland: What the Butler saw

The guitar-shaped Ormond’s Island lies close to the Cork/ Kerry border on the mountainous Beara Peninsula with the Kingdom just able to claim it by dint of a few kilometres. It has no residents now and is grazed by cattle who can loll across a connecting causeway at low tide.

The island lies just across the busy road from the Cloonee lakes in the phenomenal Gleninchaquin valley whose glaciated forms includes all nouns of a glacial vocabulary: corries; striations; erratics. Oileán Urumhan in Irish (Ormond) is in the parish of Tuosist.