The strand
Cummeen Strand is the wide tidal sandflat on your right as you drive from Sligo town out to Strandhill – at low tide a broad plain of sand and mud, at high tide part of Sligo Bay. Knocknarea, with Queen Maeve’s cairn on its summit, rises straight behind it; Benbulben’s flat top sits across the water to the north. The whole bay is protected as both a Special Area of Conservation and a Special Protection Area for its dunes, mudflats and birds.
If you only time one thing here, time the walk to Coney Island. The birds, the pillars and the light you can take at any tide; the crossing you cannot.
The pillars and the walk to Coney Island
Fourteen stout cut-stone pillars march across the sand toward Coney Island, marking the safe line of a crossing about a mile and a half (2.4 km) long. This part is called Dorrin’s Strand, after William Dorrin, owner of Coney Island, who drowned here in March 1823 when the tide rushed in on his way back to the island. The pillars went up over the following decades and were set deliberately in line with the lighthouse on Black Rock, so that on dark nights walkers could steer by its flashing light.
The crossing is free and open to anyone, but the tide is the whole story. Be on the sand only in the hour or so either side of low water, check a tide table before you set out, and don’t stray from the pillar line – the sand off it is soft, and cars are lost on the strand most years. When the tide is in, boats run to Coney from Rosses Point instead.
History and Yeats
Cummeen was once the seat of the Ormsby family; Grange, nearby, belonged to the Nicholsons. The old Ballisodare–Sligo road ran along this shore until a new road was built in 1836, and in 1891 Charles Stewart Parnell crossed via Coney Island on his way to Strandhill while campaigning in a by-election – the self-styled ‘king’ of Coney, Bryan Ward, met him and promised the island’s 29 votes.
W.B. Yeats set the strand into ‘Red Hanrahan’s Song about Ireland’:
The old brown thorn-trees break in two high over Cummeen Strand, Under a bitter black wind that blows from the left hand.
Wildlife and oysters
The flats matter most in winter, when large flocks of light-bellied Brent geese arrive from as far as the Canadian Arctic. Harbour seals haul out on the sandbanks, and the SAC’s protected species also include river and sea lamprey and the tiny narrow-mouthed whorl snail (Vertigo angustior). The shallows are still worked for shellfish: Coney Island Shellfish Ltd cultivates Gigas oysters here, continuing the trade that gave the county its name – Sligeach, ‘shelly place’.
Bring binoculars in winter and move slowly; the geese and roosting waders spook easily.
Getting there and what to know
- By car: from Strandhill, take the main Sligo road for about 2 km; just after Scarden graveyard on your left, take the next left to the strand. Parking is informal – a lay-by and roadside spaces by the entrance, which fill fast in summer.
- Facilities: none at the strand. Strandhill village, a short drive on, has cafés, toilets and surf schools.
- Access: the sand is uneven with no paved paths; the pillar walk needs sure footing and isn’t suitable for prams or wheelchairs.
- Safety: never cross alone, in fog, or on a rising tide.
Check the low-tide time before you leave Sligo – it decides everything you can do here.