10 BEST BEACHES FOR FOOD LOVERS by Rick Le Vert
IRISH INDEPENDENT – WEEKENDER MAGAZINE – TRAVEL 8TH AUG 09′
What is it about a trip to the beach that makes us so hungry? Here reveals Ireland’s best food beaches and where to quell those rumbling stomachs.
1. BALLYCONNEELY, CONNEMARA, CO. GALWAY.
Don’t bother asking anyone how to get to Ballyconneely Strand, unless you enjoy getting perplexed and bewildered looks in response. This penisula on the very sout-western edge of Connemara is ringed with tiny niches of wonderful white sand and aexotic corals. At low water, some of them unite to form longer, continuous lengths on unimpeded beach perfection.
For all the confusion, the fractured pices and multiple names that constitute Ballyconneely’s beach landscape, there is but one destination on its food map – Connemara Smokehouse. Every fillet of fish that luxuriates in the beechwood smoke of this family operation’s small traditional kiln first passes Graham Roberts’s knife. The process is controlled by hand, not machine, resulting in gently smoked and wonderully textured wild salmon, tuna and mackerel
(from €6.50 to €52.50; 095 23739; www.smokehouse.ie)
2. Rathmullan, Fanad Peninsula, Co. Donegal
3. Rosslare Strand, Co. Wexford
4. Tragumma, Skibbereen, Co. Cork
5. Ventry, Dingle Peninsula, Co. Kerry
6. Duncannon, Co. Wexford
7. Ballyteigue Strand, Kilmore Quay, Co. Wexford
8. Ardmore, Co. Waterford
9. Lahinch, Co. Clare
10. Barley Cove, Mizen Peninsula, Co. Cork