A Wonderful Surprise … Inch Beach, Co. Dingle, Ireland

My Irish ancestors must be hovering, for as we lead up to St. Patrick’s Day my mind is full of the beautiful images, and my heart of the warm feelings, I collected when we were last in the Emerald Isle.

The copy for this post is taken from an old one which, I noticed as I went through the archives, was missing its image. So, I’m reposting with new images.

Happy three days before St. Patrick’s Day!

Inch is an odd name for a sandy beach that stretches for three miles.

I remember when I first saw it … I could hardly believe my eyes.

We’d been wending our way through the narrow, curvy, undulating roads of the Dingle Peninsula, our destination Killarney. The dramatic hills were shrouded in mist and intermittent showers dampened our course. Yet, around every corner, it seemed, popped a panoramic surprise .

Inch Beach* was one such surprise.

We stopped, of course, and as there was a lull in the rain I suggested we take a stroll.

Tourists were few and far between so finding a swath of beach to call our own for a few minutes was easy. But for the wind’s bluster, the roar of the surging tide and the occasional caw of a seagull, all was peaceful. We walked the expansive beach until we met the tide and walked back again to the car, arriving just in time to beat the rain.

It’s another treasured memory of our trip to Ireland, mostly because it was such a wonderful surprise.

* Inch Beach was the beach location for the film “Ryan’s Daughter.”