North Mayo offers the very essence of Ireland’s west!

Take it in, mate. Nobody ever spends enough time taking it in.” Wise advice arrives from a friend who’s just seen the photo of Lacken Back Strand I’ve posted. From the low cliffs beneath my feet, the sand stretches out ahead of me for over half a mile, its grain barely interrupted by footprints.

The tide is out and on the turn, so there’ll be a firm flat surface to walk along, just by the water’s edge. Better watch the waves, though, or my boots will get a wash of salt water.

When the golden strip is edged near the towering dunes by a high tide, the sand becomes deep and soft, turning a fairly gentle walk into a proper sweaty workout.

This beach and me are old friends. Soon after moving here to North Mayo, I explored every boreen, alley, mud track and gully around, and will never forget the joy that filled my heart as I crested a hill and saw below a vista that summed up everything we love about this country. A golden horseshoe bay with (the only apt word) emerald-strip fields running vertically down towards the sea, along the headland opposite.

This side, ancient cliffs with seams of eras lie under my feet.

I walked – alone – here on a Christmas morning, so cold that ice sheets made the climb down to the beach a perilous journey.

I walked – alone – here at dawn on a summer morning, encountering a perfectly intact extremely dead dolphin perched on top of a dune, 15 yards from a family of seals. I stood there staring at that massive mammal, as the seal pups watched me with similar fascination.

Take it in? No need, my friend. North Mayo takes me in. That’s the way it works.

While living in West Connemara in the early 1990s, I discovered my ideal cocktail: 9/10ths living in the glorious countryside of the West of Ireland; 1/10th a couple of dashes to Galway City, where, like angostura bitters in a pink gin, everything subtly changes colour and becomes excitingly dangerous.

Six years later, I set off to find a home further north. After a night sleeping in the car, enveloped by the wind-whipped wilderness of Ballycroy, I drove on through Belmullet, around the stunning coastline of Ross Port and Pollatomish.

Onwards past gigantic cliffs, past Belderg, past mile upon mile of intact wilderness, where, save for bags of turf on the bog, human life remained invisible. Past the Céide Fields, through Ballycastle, and on, into the village of Killala.

To read Charlie’s column in full, please seen this week’s Galway City Tribune.