Dunmore Head is the most westerly point of mainland Ireland – the actual tip of the country, give or take an island or two further out in the Atlantic. It is a grassy sandstone promontory off the Slea Head Drive, and most people meet it twice: once as the headland framing Coumeenoole Beach below, and again on screen, because this is where Star Wars: The Last Jedi filmed Luke Skywalker’s island refuge of Ahch-To.
You can’t drive out onto the head. Park in the small car park above Coumeenoole Beach and walk. If you have five minutes, the view from the road is the postcard and plenty of people leave it at that. If you have an hour and the weather is halfway decent, do the loop: it is about 2km, takes around an hour, and you will often have the far end entirely to yourself.
Two warnings. The car park is tiny and shared with the beach, so it is full by late morning in summer – come early or come late. And the headland is completely exposed, with a high stone wall to climb early on and a cliff edge for company; in a proper Atlantic gust it is no place to be casual with your footing or with small children.
The walk and what’s at the top
The path climbs the spine of the headland to its highest point, where two things wait. One is an Ogham stone, incised with the notched alphabet the Irish used between roughly the 4th and 9th centuries to mark names and land. The other is the remains of a promontory fort that gave the head its name, An Dún Mór, ‘the great fort’. The cliffs underfoot are tilted beds of Devonian Old Red Sandstone, the layers visibly canted where they were folded long ago.
A coast with a long memory
These waters have wrecked ships for centuries. Two Spanish Armada vessels, the Santa María de la Rosa and the San Juan, went down in the Blasket Sound off the head in 1588 during the fleet’s disastrous voyage home around Ireland. Much more recently, on 11 March 1982, the Spanish container ship MV Ranga lost power in a storm and was wrecked on the rocks below. Near the summit a squat concrete lookout post survives from the Second World War, when pairs of men watched this coast around the clock through Ireland’s neutrality. It now doubles as the one piece of shelter on the head.
Practical information
- Getting there: follow the R559 west from Dingle onto the Slea Head Drive; the turn for Coumeenoole and the head is signposted. Public transport is sparse, so you really want a car or a guided tour.
- Parking and admission: free, open in daylight, no fee. The single small car park serves both the headland loop and Coumeenoole Beach and fills fast.
- On the walk: uneven ground, a steep pull and a high stone wall to cross. Wear shoes with grip and bring a windproof layer whatever the forecast says.
- Wildlife: a good patch for birdwatching, with seabirds working the cliffs; the Blasket boat tours out of Ventry regularly turn up dolphins, seals and basking sharks in the same waters.
Get there before the car park fills, and if you can, save the walk for a clear evening – the light going down over the Blaskets is the whole point.