Smerwick Harbour on the Dingle Peninsula

Smerwick Harbour on the north shore of the Dingle Peninsula in Ireland has a wide sandy beach overlooked on one side by mist-covered slopes of hills  and mountains, with Ballydavid Head and Pointe Bhaile Na NGall projecting into the sea, and the village of Murreagh nestling at the water’s edge. While on the other side lies the scalloped horizon of the Three Sisters with Smerwick Village in their hinterland. From the parking spot close to Na Cluainte, the sand stretches for about three kilometres, forming part of the extensive Dingle Way footpath, and the length is delineated by a small slipway at the northwest end, and a small promontory called Traigh an Fhiona at the southeast end.

The geology is so varied in this area that the two ends of this sandy beach are composed of entirely different rocks, with older compact and fractured layers of green and yellow Silurian siltstones of the Clogher Head Formation belonging to the Dunquin Group to the north – and younger coarser-grained, purple and red coloured Devonian conglomerates of the Trabeg Member of the Trabeg Conglomerate Formation of the Dingle Group to the south.

The differences in the two types of rocks are very obvious. They make an interesting contrast visually, and they afford a variation of habitat for seashore creatures, seaweeds, and lichens that colonise them. Between the two kinds of strata at the separate ends of this beach, the wide and mainly yellow sandy shore is subtlly coloured in some areas with shades of purple or pale green, reflecting the constituent grains derived from the local rocks. Pebbles exposed in wet patches at mid tide level exhibit many petrologies of which bright red stones of jasper are the most remarkable.

Some pictures illustrating these features are shown below.

Don’t forget, you can click on any photograph to enlarge the image.