The Maharees Heritage Trail
A ten-kilometre coastal loop around the tombolo north of the village, graded easy and taking about two and a half hours. It makes a circuit of the spit and takes in the three bays around it: the sheltered water of Tralee Bay, the small working harbour inlet at Scraggane, and the exposed Atlantic front of Brandon Bay. It passes through five of the six villages out there.
It is interpreted rather than merely waymarked. There are around sixteen marked points along the way covering shipwrecks, historical sites and natural features, with illustrated signs on the flora and fauna. Among the wrecks are vessels of the Spanish Armada and later cargo ships.
The headline heritage stop is offshore rather than underfoot. Illauntannig, Oileán tSeanaigh, largest of the Seven Hogs out beyond Rough Point, holds a monastic site founded by St Seanach: two small oratories, three beehive huts, a souterrain, three leachta, a burial ground and a stone cross. The trail looks out at it. Reaching it takes a boat and the right weather.
The facts
- Distance
- 10km, a loop
- Time
- About two and a half hours
- Grade
- Easy
- Start
- Sandy Bay car park at Magherabeg, 3.4km north of the village
- Maps
- Free pocket maps from the Castlegregory Visitor Information Centre, Tailor’s Row, 066 713 9422
- Season
- Open all year
Good to know
You can walk out to the start from Castlegregory rather than drive, which adds about seven kilometres to the day.
The dunes are the thing to be careful of. The Maharees Conservation Association was formed in 2016 because erosion had gone well beyond the ordinary movement of a dune system, and the single road out to the northern villages has had to be cleared of blown sand a dozen times in one winter. Stay on the route and off the dune faces.
Sections run along the shore, so check the tide before you set out. We could not find an official statement of which parts are tide-dependent, so take that as prudence rather than instruction. There are no lifeguards anywhere on the loop.
How we checked. Distance, time and route from the Dingle Peninsula tourism trail page and castlegregory.ie. This is a local waymarked heritage trail, not a National Waymarked Trail, and we could not confirm the surface underfoot. Opening hours and prices on this coast change without notice, so ring before you travel. If anything here is wrong, tell us and we will fix it.