THREE HISTORICAL SEA SITES OF INTEREST

Dunluce Castle, Bushmills, Co Antrim, tel: (+4428) 2073-1938

Dunluce, pictured above, is perched on the extreme edge of a basalt rock face, dropping down to the sea. To get to the castle, you need to cross over a bridge. It was built in the 13th Century, and the spectacular ruin is loved by photographers and drone operators who take pictures at sunset, with backdrops of red moons and, more recently, showered in the green flashes of an aurora borealis. There is an internet myth that part of the castle fell into the sea, taking seven cooks from the kitchen as it plunged. This is not true, but it makes a good story. A true story, however, is that the castle had its own gallows. An image of the castle was used on the Led Zeppelin LP, Houses Of The Holy. All day, 7 days.

Derrigimlagh Bog & the Alcock & Brown Monument, Clifden, Co Galway

By extraordinary coincidence, the wireless station where Guglielmo Marconi transmitted the first wireless messages to America is the same blanket bog where Alcock and Brown crash-landed after the first non-stop Atlantic flight. Their journey was a harrowing one, with both men having to leave the cockpit and manually clear the ice from parts of the aircraft after the controls began to freeze. The Derrigimlagh bog, pictured above, where they landed, was also the site of Marconi’s wireless station, and they mistook the bog for a landing strip. The nose of the plane sunk into the bog, but neither pilot suffered injury. They received a reward of £10,000 from The Daily Mail and a triumphant journey from Clifden to London, where they were knighted by King George. To have two phenomenal transatlantic historical achievements in the same Connemara field has got to be a reason to visit. In 2016, the Derrigimlagh looped walk opened — a 5km boardwalk cutting through the bog. The monument, an aircraft tail, is on the hillside that overlooks the bog.

Foynes Flying Boat & Maritime Museum, Foynes, Co Limerick, tel: (069) 65416, or see flyingboatmuseum.com

The museum, in the original airport terminal, harks back to the 1930s and 1940s, and the days when JFK, Bob Hope, Eleanor Roosevelt and various movie stars landed at Foynes as transatlantic passenger flights criss-crossed the Atlantic via commercial carriers including Pan Am and BOAC. Foynes is also the place where, in 1942, chef Joe Sheridan served the first Irish coffee to passengers from a flying boat that had been forced to return to the airport due to bad weather. All day, 7 days.