THE BEACH IS BACK!
Two weeks ago, locals in Dooagh awoke to see the sandy stretch they’d lost more than 30 years before had returned - and now, so have the tourists...
A freak storm has given Dooagh back its sandy seho–r and locals are thrilled
THE Arabs will be here next, coming over the mountain,’ jokes one local, walking by the golden strand at Dooagh on the way to Kielty’s Bar on Achill Island. ‘Plenty of sand for them anyway...’ Inside Kielty’s bar on Wednesday evening, Emmet Callaghan’s phone is stuck to his ear – again. It’s been buzzing off the hook since Monday. He was on to the BBC, CNN, NBC, France 3 and The Guardian newspaper earlier, all looking for Skype videos and interviews. Now there’s wind that Arab TV network Al Jazeera might be on its way.
Less than two weeks ago, Emmet and the rest of
It’s kick-started the summer season - May is never this busy
➤ the villagers woke up, blinkingly, to discover that their golden horseshoe beach – which vanished in the storms of 1984, to be replaced by large jagged rocks, but which had been slowly coming back since Easter – was now at the epicentre of a worldwide media storm. After 33 years, Dooagh, which means ‘sandy banks’, was sandy once again.
Only Mother Nature could have concocted such a fairytale. Using the mighty pull and push of her spring tide, abetted by the strong northerly winds, she dumped hundreds of thousands of tonnes of sand, burying the jagged boulders deep beneath and leaving behind a breathtaking field of gold. The first of the sand started coming in dribs and drabs last year, culminating in a massive sand dump over the Easter.
It also didn’t hurt that the return of Dooagh Beach coincided with the hottest week of the year so far, when the blue skies and glittering azure waters made the pocket of heaven look more like the Mediterranean than Mayo.
And so the scene was set for a Mecca-like pilgrimage to Achill’s Wild Atlantic Way, where even the gently baa-ing lambs, hopping along the roads between turf-stacked fields, had a giddier gait than usual. The basking sharks must have gotten wind of the excitement too. Two of the sea giants came swimming into the bay – a first in years – for their close-ups, just as Emmet was filming with TG4.
In just a few days, the tide has already brought plenty of great fortune for locals here and may yet help resurrect a village decimated by the brutal ravages of the economy. Kielty’s shop and post office has been boarded up for the past two years. The Atlantic and Currymore hotels are shut while the Wave Crest Hotel only opens sporadically.
The last big storm of 2014 wreaked havoc along the seafront, churning up stones of the former ‘tra’ car park, washing away an access road and demolishing a house. Emmet has been on to Mayo County Council to fix the beach access before the real summer rush on Dooagh.
‘We we took a massive hit during the recession, relying a lot on domestic and UK tourism and they stopped coming,’ explains Emmet, who is lulled to sleep each night by the sound of churning stones beneath him in Dooagh Bay, like four generations before him. Born in 1991, he never enjoyed playing football on the beach pitch like his 78-year- old grandfather Michael – until now. Pride of place at home is a treasured family heirloom, a bugle, once sounded by Emmet’s great- great- grandfather Patrick, when seaweed was thrown up on to the beach in the spring tide.
Michael Callaghan explains: ‘My own grandfather sounded the bugle when the wrack came in to tell people in the village to come and get it to fertilise their land and crops. They’d all come down for the “meitheal”. It was very important – I hope Emmet passes it on to his children one day.’ Emmet, who works for Achill Tourism, explains that when the beach at Dooagh disappeared, the village of Keel, a few minutes up the road and boasting a 5km silver strand, took over as the island hub.
But it was like high summer on Wednesday of last week in Kielty’s Bar, where a group of French tourists were in for dinner. ‘It’s kick-started the summer season – May is never this busy,’ confirms landlord Alan Kielty. ‘Visitors are way up, coming from all over. A woman from Boyle sat into the car once she read it.’
On Thursday morning, Fr John Kenny is sitting on a rock, bearing witness to divine scenes. There’s a flurry of camera-wielding French tourists, a brave German called Uli in his Speedos tip-toeing by the seashore – he read about the beach in Der Spiegel – yapping dogs and even a golfer teeing off, Greystones man Jim Quigley, who moved to Achill 18 months ago.
Known as Fr Trendy and the Raving Priest, Fr Kenny – who DJs and runs a Latino club in Westport – worked here back in the 1990s and is back with his Mrs Doyle cutout to see the beach and promote his ‘Peddle, Paddle, Pilgrimage and Party for Pieta House’.
B&B owners and publicans are now hoping for a bumper summer. Up at the luxurious and quirky Ferndale – one of only 20 Bord Fáilte fivestar B&Bs in Ireland – owner John Fratschoel says: ‘We’re very happy with this, it’s such a unique story and will bring some extra interest. The more people who discover Achill the better, and the beach makes people aware of this beautiful island.’
Behind Dooagh village is Slievemore Mountain, in the shadow of which are broken stones, cottage ruins and potato ridges that make up the famous Deserted Village. In the 1830s, 40 families were evicted from their land and thatched mud cabins
There’s so much bad news, people love good news stories with a happy feel
when it was planted by Protestant families. They were pushed down to the sea with their donkeys and few possessions.
There they made the best of the boggy land, using sand, seaweed and cow manure to reclaim the bog and turn it into green land. Slowly the remaining families joined the tribe and Dooagh ultimately grew to become one of the biggest villages in Ireland – possibly Europe – with 200 homes. Dooagh isn’t quite like Achill’s famous Deserted Village but it has suffered in recent years. Back in its heyday from the 1950s to the 1970s, it was the jewel in Achill’s crown and the beach was very much part of its appeal.
From the early 1900s, artists flocked to this unspoilt paradise, across the Michael Davitt Bridge at Achill Sound. The painter Paul Henry famously arrived here with his wife Grace for a two-week holiday but tore up his return ticket to London on a rocky spot at Gubalennaun and stayed on for nine years, painting among other pieces, portraits of village children.
When Scoil Acla opened in 1910, after the foundation of Conradh na Gaeilge and the Gaelic revival movement, Achill became a haven for artists, musicians, writers and poets. Although self-sufficient, life was tough on Achill. There was a knitting factory, employing up to 30 girls but work was scarce and many villagers were forced to move to Scotland to work as ‘tattie-hokers’ or potato pickers, from as young as ten years of age.
Fishing was always a major part of island life but Achill became famous for bask shark fishing in the 1950s. Sharks – drawn into Keem Bay to munch on plankton – were hunted for oil in their vast livers, which was processed at a plant at Purteen Harbour. Before being banned in 1984, up to 50 young men were employed at nearby Keem Beach, many returning from England for the season from April until August.
John McNamara, retired school principal, is out for a walk by the beach. He tells how he went looking for a job in the supermarket when he was 16 and landed one cooking for 50 fishermen at Keem Beach. ‘I got the breakfast ready at dawn and cooked their meals for the fishermen,’ he says. ‘ The first week my wages were 8 pounds ten shillings – four for the basic wage and another four for every shark caught. It was a vast amount in 1951, bigger here than in England. I got nothing the next week though.’
Anyone traveling to Achill on the latest waves of excitement will testify to what long-time visitors have known for years – its characters are as rich and interesting as its sea and landscapes.
John McNamara fondly remembers another time Dooagh made the world headlines, back in 1987. Englishman Don Allum crossed the Atlantic solo from Newfoundland and washed up in the dead of night at Dooagh on September 7.
‘I read about Don Allum being off the Atlantic coast and I went out towards Achill Head looking for him off the coast,’ remembers John. ‘I was talking to my son Sean, God rest his soul, who was coming over from the pub. I said, “keep an eye for any sign of the sailor”. Ten minutes later Sean arrived back up, saying “Dad, the buck has landed”. He arrived in his boat, called the QE3, in the night. Someone must have sent up prayers as he touched down there in low water on the tide – any other time he’d have been smashed on the rocks. There was some excitement. The ambulance came here trying to get him to Castlebar but Mary Lourdie up at Lourdie’s pub said, “he won’t go to Castlebar, he’ll come up here to me and I’ll get the man a pint.”’
Don Allum’s feat – 30 years ago this year – is celebrated every year in July on Dooagh Day. And now the return of Dooagh Beach – as long as it sticks – will join the annals. Some say violent storms could see the beach disappear again but at NUIG, Dr Kevin Lynch and Dr Eugene Farrell don’t expect it to. ‘We’d assess how deep is the veneer of sand. Hopefully over time the beach elevation will rise – at least until the next storm.’
‘We couldn’t have dreamt up this interest,’ smiles Emmet. ‘ There’s so much bad news, people love good news stories with a happy feel.’
John McNamara points out that fortune favours the prepared too, and heaps praise on Emmet and his colleagues for running with the story. Drone footage filmed by Emmet’s boss Sean Molloy last year shows the transformation. John smiles: ‘I celebrate the young people here as the job that’s to be done, to restore and maintain a population here in Achill, must be done by the youth and I praise them to the high heavens.
‘ The impact in the media is brilliant. In the past you’d have to pay for that coverage but now these young fellas are taking the bull by the horns. Once people visit here, they realise Dooagh Beach is the tip of the iceberg – and this magical place is much more than a fairytale.’