Round Ireland

PART TWO

Last month in PBO I wrote about our adventures in Samphire, our 30ft Beneteau Antares motorboat, which I was cruising round Ireland with my friend Tony. We left Fleetwood for Bangor, Northern Ireland, mid-June and headed clockwise around the coast. We’d shouldered overfalls near Arklow, Atlantic swell off Mizen Head and passed the Skelligs and Fastnet rock. From the outset, we’d intended to take a break about halfway round, and now here we were at Fenit on the west coast of Ireland.

With this in mind I’d contacted a number of non-boating friends who’d expressed an interest in meeting up. As for the location of the rendezvous – I had no hesitation in nominating Fenit, County Kerry. I’d first visited with two angling pals in 1995 and been so taken with the place that my wife Kath and I spent a week there the following year. Since that time a marina has been added to the substantial harbour, which is the port for the thriving town of Tralee a few miles to the east.

Back in 1996, Kath and I were both concerned that Fenit was perhaps a little ‘off-the-beaten track’ to prosper, and risked the fate of a slow decline. On the evidence of this return visit we needn’t have worried. In addition to the marina and its associated sailing activities, there’s a thriving swimming club and watersports centre. Of more general interest is the magnificent Saint Brendan Monument located on the highest point of Great Samphire island, against which the harbour was built. If you were wondering, the name of the boat is not a coincidence!

The hub of the village is, without doubt, the West End Bar and Restaurant, located at the landward end of the massive stone breakwater which joins Little Samphire island to the mainland. The proprietor, who I met back