It came, it enchanted and now it’s gone again: the beach that reappeared on the Irish coast in 2017 after a 34-year absence, garnering worldwide attention, has vanished again.
Winter storms have swept away the sand at Dooagh, Achill Island, in County Mayo, leaving only rock and a reminder that what nature gives, it can take away.
“It was a series of storms,” Seamus Molloy, of Achill Tourism, said on Monday. “The beach took a really big battering during Storm Ali in September. Some huge rollers pounding off the coast, huge walls of water just falling down on the beach.”
Molloy had suspected the beach was slipping away. “The sand was in flux, you could see it. Since Christmas I was looking at it most days. It happened over the past month – just washed away.”
The beach at Dooagh, a 200-metre sliver wedged between beaches at Keel and Keem, first disappeared during winter storms in 1984.
A freak tide around Easter 2017 restored it, hundreds of tonnes of sand coating the rocks, bringing with it a surge of media interest – BBC, CNN, Fox News, Time, Shanghai Daily – and tourists, including busloads from China.
“In our own office here in 2017 we saw a 71% footfall increase in people seeking information,” said Molloy.
Locals had braced for the beach’s departure and were hoping for a swift return, said the tourism manager. “It was great while we had it but there was an air of inevitability about it going. The sand is just out in the bay. With the right conditions it can come back.”
Jon Fratschoel, the owner of Ferndale bed and breakfast, marvelled at the amount of sand washed ashore in 2017 and now gone. “It’s incredible, a natural wonder,” he said.
Fratschoel was sceptical about the beach’s tourism impact. “I don’t think it’s a huge thing. When it first happened, maybe 10% of my guests knew about it.” He said Achill’s permanent beaches outclassed the ephemeral one. “It wasn’t the nicest of them. And it was quite short. I’m not sure if it’s a loss or not.”
Achill, population 2,440, is Ireland’s biggest island, 57 square miles of bog, cliff and beach ringed by the Atlantic. A bridge connects it to the mainland.
The beauty and pristine wilderness have drawn and inspired artists and writers. Graham Greene stayed at a traditional stone cottage in Dooagh village rented by his girlfriend, Catherine Walston, in the late 1940s. He reputedly wrote parts of The Heart of the Matter and The Fallen Idol beneath its corrugated tin roof.
Heinrich Böll, the German anti-Nazi Nobel laureate, lived on Achill in the 1950s and 1960s. His former cottage is now a retreat for writers. Kevin Toolis chronicled the island’s mourning traditions in My Father’s Wake, part memoir, part meditation on death.
Islanders were disappointed to bid farewell to Dooagh beach but there was a bright side, said Molloy. “This is just a shining example of the power of nature. From that point of view, it’s still a good news story.”
