Richard Nairn - Wild Shores: The Magic of Ireland’s Coastline

WILD
SHORES

THE MAGIC
OF IRELANDS
COASTLINE

RICHARD
NAIRN

Gill Books

For Wendy

And to the memory of my father,
George E. Nairn (19202014)

Contents

Preface

To most people, the coast is associated with holidays, hot summer weather, beaches, sand dunes and fun. To some, it is a place for regular sport and exercise walking the dog, cycling on coastal paths, swimming, sailing, rowing, angling and many other water sports. For a few, it is their workplace fishermen, shipping crews, port workers, lighthouse staff. To me, it offers an endless range of interests a wide diversity of wildlife, fascinating archaeology and history and remote places like islands that give a glimpse of wilderness.

My earliest memory of the sea was playing on the sand in the old stone-built harbour at Sandycove near Dn Laoghaire. My father went off to swim at the Forty Foot Bathing Place for Gentlemen only. I was much older when I learned that this was a place where men were only required to wear bathing costumes after nine oclock in the morning.

When my earlier book Irelands Coastline was first published in 2005, many people asked me if their favourite place was included. I had to explain that the book was not a geographical guide but instead a general account of the ecology, history and uses of the coast. In response to these requests, I have now attempted to fill that gap. This book follows the Irish coastline from place to place, starting and ending at the north-east corner. I have explored almost all the places mentioned here either by boat or on foot. Occasionally, I have flown over them. Inevitably, my primary interests in ecology and nature conservation are discussed throughout the book, but I regularly divert into the subjects of geology, history and archaeology wherever these are relevant. Nevertheless, there are still some secret places that I have not yet reached, either because they are mostly inaccessible or because it is impossible, in one lifetime, to visit every small bay, headland and island in a tortuous coastline some 7,500 kilometres in length. The selection of places mentioned in the text is a very personal one and it is not possible to include every jewel on this endless chain.

Praegers writings and adventures for seven decades of robust physical health have been inspirational to me throughout my life and I have tried to follow in his footsteps throughout Ireland on land or on the sea.

Understanding the weather and tides makes me acutely aware of how dependent we are on the sea and gives me a unique perspective on the Irish coast. In the main chapters I follow the coastline in a clockwise direction starting in County Antrim. In the final chapter, Turning the Tide, I reflect on some current threats to the coastal environment and how these might be approached in future.

The American writer and biologist Rachel Carson summed up how fundamental the coast is to our well-being. Like the sea itself, the shore fascinates us who return to it, the place of our dim ancestral beginnings. In the recurrent rhythms of tides and surf and the varied life of the tide lines there is the obvious attraction of movement and change and beauty. There is also, I am convinced, a deeper fascination born of inner meaning and significance.

My father taught me to sail in a wooden dinghy around Dublin Bay and I have enjoyed boats all my life. I love to be out on the sea with just the wind, the waves and some good friends for company. I would like my children and grandchildren to enjoy the same privilege.

Introduction

The sun was already sinking fast over the coastal town of Wexford when I arrived at Rosslare Point on a fine summer evening fifty years ago. I had been delayed in Dublin and arrived two hours later than planned so my friend David Cabot had already crossed to the island where the terns were nesting. This was before the era of mobile phones so there was nothing for it but to borrow a small wooden rowing boat from a local man and set off across Wexford Harbour on my own. I had no fear as I had been messing about in boats since childhood and I have a strong rowing stroke. But I had underestimated the tidal currents. Twice each day a vast body of water fills and empties through the narrow mouth of Wexford Harbour and, though shallow, the currents can be faster than a river.

As I reached the centre of the channel in the fading light, I realised that I was being dragged by the tide further and further out into the Irish Sea and away from the sandy island. It crossed my mind that I had no radio or way of contacting help. My foolishness became crystal clear when I remembered that I did not even have a lifejacket. I had only a wooden boat and two heavy oars. For the first time in my life, I tasted that strange mixture of fear and respect for the power of nature. My survival was now a toss-up between the sea and my own resources. Then my years of training kicked in. Summoning all my strength and stamina, I pulled hard on the oars and turned across the tide. Fortunately, after more than an hour of exhausting rowing, the tide turned, and I was able to pull the boat up on a shelly beach and sit down to recover. Thoughts of Robinson Crusoe passed through my mind as the small island was uninhabited. I lay back on the sand and counted my blessings.

The turn of the tide is one of those immutable things in life. Like night following day, summer fading to autumn, middle age after youth, I know it will always come. I cannot stop its steady progress. It never lets me down. Ebb and flow, fall and rise, twice a day, unfailing, dependable, predictable. In a crazy, uncontrollable world, I know that, as long as the moon is in the sky, the tide will never fail. It carries my boat along or stops it in its tracks. It pushes up the beach, slowly erasing my footprints. It leaves behind rich offerings. A spiny spider crab that once crept about the deep seabed, a heap of oyster shells dredged from the sandbanks offshore or the bleached skull of a seabird that did not survive the winter.

When the tide turns against the wind direction, it pushes the sea surface up into small crests that change the motion of a sailing boat, like driving from the road onto a gravel track. Just as the wind moves the air about, tides pull and push seawater around the coast, in and out of rock pools, up and down a beach. But unlike the wind, which is invisible, unpredictable, sometimes gentle, often angry, I can see the tide as it passes, watch its steady progress, make allowances for its effects.

The turn of the tide is a wondrous thing. The constant movement of the ocean pauses for a moment, takes a deep breath, reaches its limits and starts to return the way it came. Curtains of seaweed are swept in the opposite direction, sand grains roll down the beach, and crabs scuttle into deeper water. I feel a different pull on the boat as it implores me to follow rather than resist it. The tide is my constant friend, not a threatening adversary. But I have reached this accommodation after fifty years of experience of the sea. Sitting on that beach, it seemed like the tide had granted me a narrow escape and taught me a lesson for the future.

Tern Island in Wexford Harbour was then little more than a sandy ridge with a thin covering of dune grasses but at the time it held one of the largest colonies of terns in Ireland. Five different species of these small, delicate seabirds arrived to breed here each summer from their African winter quarters. The nests were closely spaced and little more than shallow scrapes in the sand, sometimes lined with a few shells or blades of grass. My friend David, who had travelled to the island ahead of me, had invited me to help him with a long-term research project on the rare roseate tern that nested on Tern Island in greater numbers than any other place in Europe. I was thrilled to be involved with a project where I got to see the birds at close quarters. This research had a practical application for conservation, as fitting a small sample of the terns with tiny numbered leg rings in Ireland demonstrated that these migratory birds were being hunted in Africa and the population was in steep decline. Alas, a few years later, the island was completely destroyed by a series of winter storms and the terns were forced to find other breeding sites.