Dallying in Dingle

Dingle is a clear competitor to Kinsale in the tourism, boating and gastronomy stakes. An important port since Norman times thanks to its perfect shelter, the Council built Ireland’s first yacht marina here in the 1990s, keen to compensate for the gradual decline in fishing that they could see coming.

It’s a great natural harbour, sheltered from all sides by high ground and accessed through a narrow entrance in the south east corner which is itself protected from the prevailing south westerlies by the cliffs of Reenbeg Point. Inside, it’s quite shallow, but there is a well marked, dredged channel which makes entry in the dark perfectly feasible at all stages of the tide. The marina is on the west side of the docks, with the fishing pier and commercial moorings to the east.

Today Dingle Marina is one of the nicest facilities anywhere in northern Europe. Modern, scrubbed to within an inch of its life, run by Nigel, Colm and Peter who are lovely and costing less than half what you might pay on the South Coast of England, what’s not to like? The Supervalu supermarket is a short walk away, assuming you can avoid slipping into any one of half a dozen refreshment points on the way (most offering live music). If the galley staff have mutinied, there’s a decent crowd of eateries for a variety of budgets (though I don’t recall seeing a McDonalds, an Indian or a Chinese). Fuel comes in cans which you can borrow from the Marina office and the petrol station is next to the supermarket.

If you need a larger amount (say 150 litres) you can order it from McSweeneys and it arrives by road tanker the next day – at a very good price by English standards. We made a provisional arrangement for this, but in the end I baulked as we would need to move onto the windward side of the main fishing pier. The wall is flat with good mooring bollards and the Marina staff come to help with lines. But with the weather forecast offering nothing below 25 knots likely to pin us onto that pier for the next day or so and without any decent fenderboard onboard, I was reluctant. In theory we had enough fuel to motor all the way back to Gosport, so why take the risk of scratching the Pride and Joy?

Note to self: don’t leave the fenderboard in the shed at home.

Dingle has many claims to fame, but for many people, it’s the home of Fungie the dolphin. He attracted a global following when he arrived in the harbour in the mid-1980s and began charming local sailors, and although he’s crossed the bar now, he helped turn Dingle into an eco-tourism hub for the west of Ireland.

Our American cousins have been coming here for decades, searching for their ancestral roots, enjoying the welcome, wondering why Guinness doesn’t taste like Budweiser, assuming that the only safe food is fish and chips, enjoying the spectacular scenery on the days they can see it and thanking God that their forebears emigrated to a more comfortable lifestyle on the days when it rains… steadily.

Now though, there’s a new strand of tourism that’s well established – exploring the natural beauty of the landscape. I’m loosely linked to a south coast builder of RIBs looking to broaden their foothold in the ‘Adventure’ market, so I spoke to several of the tourist boat operators around the harbour about their businesses. A number of them have very modern, well-equipped RIBs, with the Ulster-based company Redbay Boats predominating. One of the most interesting nuggets to emerge was the existence of a ‘BREXIT Impact Loan Scheme’ worth around €330m offered by the Dublin government in collaboration with Brussels since 2021. In short, it recognises that one of the impacts of BREXIT for Irish fishermen will be the obstacles facing the export of seafood, particularly to France. As a boy growing up in West Cork in the 1960s I remember the lorry that came from Paris every fortnight to collect the lobsters we caught…

Those days have almost gone, so Dublin has set aside a tidy sum managed through the Irish Seafood Development Agency to help fishermen diversify. They get fair money to lay up or sell their boats, retrain their crews in other industries or establish new marine businesses that will be less affected by BREXIT. The main one here? Marine tourism. You can get a 60% grant towards a new boat.

I wonder what the Westminster equivalent is? Well, they are spending money on a ‘world class fisheries management plan’ (announced in July 2023, only seven years after the vote to leave) which is long overdue and focuses on sustainable stocks. The UK Seafood Fund has £100m earmarked for the ‘long term future of the UK fisheries sector, helping to drive innovation, support job creation and boost seafood exports to new markets’. Presumably because France and Spain are not near enough and don’t eat fish any more?

I’m less certain how it will affect the fishing communities around our coastline in the short to medium term. I saw firsthand how the Irish have implemented a sensible, practical – albeit partial – solution. The new boats are busy and the punters I spoke to exhilarated by the ride, the scenery and the wildlife (they saw the seal colony on Great Blasket, loads of gannets in close formation and a pod of dolphins) – and this was a wet Wednesday after a gale had gone through.

Live music is a key part of the ‘Dingle experience’. Almost every pub has a regular session at least one night a week. Timing is everything if you want to hear traditional Irish music though – three seemed to be a few too many bands pushing out dodgy versions of ‘Sweet Caroline’ so we settled for a quick survey of the Black Stuff at two legendary joints, Dick Macks and Foxy John’s. Dick Macks has been in the same family for over a century and serves two functions: a splendid bar on one side and a store making and selling leather belts on the other.

Foxy John’s is my favourite. It also has two purposes: pub and hardware store. ‘Go in for a bag of nails and come out hammered’ as they say. I purchased a very fine wire brush and two pints of excellent Guinness. Sadly we were too early (or too late – can’t quite remember) for the band, who perform behind the counter on the hardware side of the place.

The weather forecast was going to make a stop in one of the secluded anchorages in the Blasket Islands uncomfortable, so we decided to take the bus past Ventry, down towards Slea Head and the village of Dunquin where there are great views across to the islands and a museum about the hardy souls who lived there until the 1950s.