Islands of Ireland: In the swim of things at Sandy Cove Island

A very short drive from Kinsale lies an island that is the international focal point for a tough breed of people.

Sandy Cove Island, or Cnoc an Rois, is a grassy island which hosts a significant population of seagulls which create an enveloping cacophony for anybody who strays too near. It is unpopulated, apart from two herds of wild goats, and as it is possible to wade to it at high tide from the slip opposite at Sandy Cove, it attracts the occasional angler.

It is situated at the entrance to Ardkilly Creek, known as the Pill, just to the west of the channel that winds to Kinsale.

This creek was used by smugglers of old to gain access to the town. The island has been the site of several shipwrecks over the centuries, including the Ruby, Eliza, St Alban’s, Hampden, and Neptune as recorded in Jerome Lordan’s comprehensive book No Flowers on A Sailor’s Grave.

However, it is for another maritime activity that Sandy Island owes its repute as it is a magnet for hundreds of swimmers throughout the year drawn to the many challenges of its 1,600m circumference.

Ned Dennison from Vermont in the US is a member of Sandy Cove Island Swim Club and has been swimming around Sandy Cove for years. All weather. Year-round.

Another, bigger group is the Sandy Cove Island swimmers, which has legions of followers. Ned runs a swimming camp in the summer with participants coming from around the world to dip their toes in the Atlantic.

Ned Dennison

“Our claim to fame is that we have had more than 20 solo English Channel swimmers. It’s a training ground for long-distance swimmers,” says Ned. And needless to say Ned has swum it himself.

“I’ve swum a little more than 2,000 times around the island. No swim has ever been the same. Ever. We have 4m of tide, we have wind coming from all sorts of directions depending on the time of day, different kinds of light. It is protected by the prevailing westerly winds by the Old Head Peninsula

“During Storm Brendan it was the colour of chocolate milk.

As the current moves around you’ve got all sorts of weird currents so it can be a challenging swim.

Ned says it takes him 23 to 25 minutes to get around the island, which he will usually do several times in a swim. The record is held by Lisa Cummins at 23 or 24 circuits. She was training for an English Channel swim and was out there more than 12 hours.

Ned says swimmers tend to go anti-clockwise because if people get tired for the last part of the swim they’re inside the island and protected.

The popularity of the island is huge with swimmers with big numbers coming to try their hand.

“As a result of a lot of long-distance swimming activity Sandy Cove Island has become the centre of marathon swimming in Ireland. It’s also one of the top 10 training places in the world. We have people that build their vacations who build their holidays around swimming a lap around Sandy Cove. Now there are more than 150 marathon swimmers in Co Cork, most of them inspired by the Sandy Cove groups.”

Marathon swimmers are categorised by swimming more than 10km but Sandy Cove Island attracts every kind from casual to triathletes and marathon swimmers.

“On a typical summer’s day there are probably 20 pods of swimmers that come there,” says Ned. “There are three women without bathing caps or goggles and they do breast stroke and chat. In the summer there are a group of us there at 6am, there’s a triathlon group, there are some women with young kids.

Each one of those pods is a group of friends doing something they enjoy and they mind each other.

“We have more than 80 people coming for Cork Distance Week in July, about eight of them will do the English Channel. Others will do Catalina [Los Angeles], or Lough Ness or Robben Island [South Africa] or swim around Manhattan.”

• How to get there: Drive 5km directly south of Kinsale, Co Cork. The island is privately owned
• Other: Kinsale Harbour: A History, John Thuillier, Collins Press; No Flowers on A Sailor’s Grave, Old Head Press, Jerome Lordan; sandycoveswimmers.com; sandycovewebbook.wordpress.com