Clew Bay
A bay full of drowned hills, and the light that moves across it all day.
Clew Bay is the reason the light here is the way it is. It opens west to the Atlantic between Achill to the north and Croagh Patrick to the south, with Clare Island sitting in the mouth like a stopper, and the weather comes in off it in bands you can watch arriving.
The islands are drumlins, hills of glacial till left by the ice and half drowned when the sea rose. They lie in rows, all shaped the same, steep at the seaward end and tailing off towards Westport, green on top and bare where the tide has cut them. Local tradition says there are three hundred and sixty five of them, one for every day of the year. Nobody has ever counted the same number twice, and it does not matter.
From Murrisk you see the south side of all this. Bertra strand runs out into the bay below the village, a long spit of sand with the water on both sides, and from the end of it the islands are close enough to make out the sheep. At low tide the mud between them is alive with birds. At high tide, on a still evening, the whole bay goes the colour of the sky and the islands float.
The drawing on the front page of this site is my attempt to keep looking at it. It takes the weather and the tide from the forecast every hour and redraws the bay as it should be right now. It gets it slightly wrong, which is how I know it is worth doing.