West Cork seaside home, where Wally the Walrus made headlines, on sale for €675,000

Panoramic sea views, wildlife encounters and a famous walrus connection make this West Cork coastal home a truly unique offering

A still from an ad for Virgin Media TV featuring a walrus piloting a speedboat

Dunnycove, Ardfield, Clonakilty
€675,000
Size	122 sq m (1,315 sq ft)
Bedrooms	2+1
Bathrooms	3
BER	G

Unlike a certain Virgin Media TV ad, walruses don’t clamber on board speedboats and roar off jetties to the sound of Billy Ocean’s crooning Suddenly.

No, siree, they can sink them, as Wally the Walrus proved here at Dunnycove near West Cork’s Clonakilty back in summer 2021: The scenic spot surfaced as part of the young male walrus’s five-month Western European tour of destruction, and international media monitoring, with at least 17 confirmed sightings on his 2,500 mile+ meander.

Some tallies suggest that in the absence of ice floes to rest up on, the chunky young and tusked male Wally damaged or sank up to a dozen small craft as he cruised off course from the Arctic circle to Valentia in Kerry, Wales, Spain, France, the Scilly Isles, Waterford, and West Cork, before going with the floe back to the chilly north, via Iceland.

A still from an ad for Virgin Media TV featuring a walrus piloting a speedboat

Woebegone Wally’s wildlife travels and travails inspired at least one book, translated as Wally and Us by Dutch author Irwan Droog, and surely also provided the spark for the uplifting TV speedboat ad too?

However, Wally did the opposite of uplifting at Dunnycove, recalls the owner of this 1,315 sq ft bungalow with its most expansive sea views, over crystal clear water and caves: looking to rest up his weary bones and 800kg of blubber (he was the combined weight of a rowing crew of eight men): As was his wont, he sank a pretty swanky speedboat just beneath her home five summers ago (it never sped again).

The Arctic Walrus, which people have named Wally, has been spotted again in West Cork, this time in Crookhaven. The walrus is drawing a big crowd of onlookers. Picture: Andy Gibson.

People attempt to coax Wally the arctic walrus from a speedboat it was resting in, to a less expensive rib craft, at Crookhaven, Co. Cork. Picture: Niall Carson

Originally from Northern Ireland, and herself a seasoned world traveller with decades of wanderlust before settling in the Clonakilty area where she ran a shop, she bought this detached 1960s build from a schoolteacher 38 years ago as a holiday base.

Later, she moved into it full-time, extending and adapting it and creating two good-size bedrooms (one is en suite), while never tiring of the views as “they are different every day and in every weather.”

Charlie the Seal is a regular, as are basking sharks, she adds, but never in her wildest dreams and many wildlife encounters thought a walrus would make waves and rock the boat on her vista-scanning doorstep.

Upping sticks now to move to Clonkilty town, her well-tended home on a third of an acre up steps or a steep drive from the leafy cul de sac lane to a sandy swimming spot called Dunnycove and its (slippery) slip has a €675,000 AMV with agent Mark Kelly of Hodnett Forde.

Mr Kelly describes the accommodation as “flexible,” as it can be divided in two with two entry points, has three bedrooms (2+1), three bathrooms, with two living areas with stoves and two fitted kitchens.

The 0.3 acre site may have further extension/upgrade potential and currently includes a tall workshed in old corrugated steel (like an old Aussie dunny?!) with distracting views from its east-facing front window.

Location is near Ardfield village and its recently reopened pub and restaurant, The Mountain, with numerous beaches and other rarely visited coves close to hand, or to fin.

VERDICT: Cracking setting and ideal for morning dips, and complete with lofty studio, parking and bike shed, this one-off home’s elevated seaside setting alone is bound to float some buyer’s boat.