Sheer and dark against whatever the sky is doing that day, the Cliffs of Moher rise seven hundred feet out of the Atlantic, and in County Clare, the sky is nearly always doing something. The enormity of the location takes a moment to comprehend while standing at the observation point on a morning with low clouds and a westerly breeze, with the ocean pressing against the base of the rock below and no other sound competing with it. It’s one of those sceneries that takes good but incomplete pictures. The picture is always lacking something.
That moment is one of hundreds along a coastal road that stretches 1,600 miles from the northern tip of County Donegal to the harbor town of Kinsale in County Cork, some two hours south of Galway on the Wild Atlantic Way. The road and the coastline it travels along predate the Irish government’s 2014 formalization of the route as a tourism venture. The designation served to connect the disparate elements into a cohesive journey, which is, as it happens, one of the stronger justifications for visiting the west of Ireland.
There are various types of sceneries that change depending on the county. Because Donegal’s Slieve League cliffs are among the highest in Europe and see far fewer visitors than the Cliffs of Moher, you may stand at the edge without a throng of people surrounding you, which is becoming increasingly uncommon at any coastal monument in Europe. The 111-mile Ring of Kerry circuit in County Kerry blends seaside dips, glacial lakes, and mountain passes in a way that makes stopping truly challenging. Every headland opens to a distinct Atlantic and sky composition.
Without the performance of many coastal tourist destinations, the seafood is present throughout. For a considerable amount of time, Kinsale, located at the southern end of the route, has been referred to as Ireland’s gourmet capital. Local shellfish, dayboat fish, and little intervention are the basic tenets of Fishy Fishy, a restaurant on the waterfront.
Oysters from neighboring bays, lobster from the waters surrounding the Old Head of Kinsale, seafood soup cooked with cream, and whatever was fresh that morning. In the sense that the word suggests intricacy and lengthy reservation lists, it is not a destination restaurant. In a port town that has been doing it that way for decades, it is simply a place that does one thing well and consistently.
Out of the Blue in Dingle, located further north on the Dingle Peninsula, operates on an entirely different principle: they only offer what the independent boats brought in that day. They close if they are unable to find what they require. People who have made travel plans just to dine there are loyal because of that commitment, and it makes sense. When the choice of what to serve was made at the pier that morning, the fish tasted different.
A more structured approach to interact with the cuisine at its source is provided by the Taste the Atlantic trail, which follows alongside the main Wild Atlantic approach route. The locations that lie between what tourists see and what the area actually produces are shellfish farms that are reachable by road, smokehouses where salmon and mackerel cure in traditional kilns, and oyster bays where you can eat at the water’s edge. It is worthwhile to locate them. The description is justified by the Wild Atlantic Way’s seaside landscape. However, the seafood, when consumed at the appropriate locations along the way, is what completes the trip.
