Overview
Most of the Old Head of Kinsale is a private golf estate, so the first thing to know is what you can and can’t reach. The headland runs about two miles into the Atlantic south-west of Kinsale, dropping sharply into the sea on three sides, and the golf links occupies the tip – including the 1853 lighthouse, which the public only reaches on a couple of rare open days a year. What everyone can do is walk the perimeter loop and visit the Lusitania Museum. Between them you get the cliffs, the medieval ruins and the sea, which is most of why you’d come. This is a stop on the Wild Atlantic Way; in fact it’s the first Signature Discovery Point on the whole route.
Walking the headland
If you do one thing here, walk the loop – a six-kilometre route from the Garrylucas Beach car park, where parking is free. It follows a paved lane around the edge of the golf course, so you get the length of the promontory without setting foot on a fairway, and it takes about an hour and a half to two hours at a photographing pace. You’ll pass the outer walls of De Courcy Castle and get the lighthouse in view beyond the greens. The gates at the tip mark the end of public access; there’s no walking out to the light. The views are of the open Atlantic, not the Irish Sea as is sometimes claimed, and the wind off it is sharp even in summer, so bring a layer and proper shoes. Cyclists can ride out from Kinsale, roughly six kilometres by road.
The long history of the head
People have used this headland since at least the third century AD, when tradition says the chieftain Cearmna raised a fort here, Dún Cearmna. Around 1223 Milo de Courcy built the stone castle whose walls still trace the cliff edge. Navigation came to define the place: Charles II granted Sir Robert Reading a patent for a lighthouse in 1665, and after an over-tall 1814 tower kept vanishing into the fog, the squat 1853 tower that still works today took its place, flashing a group of two white lights every ten seconds. The rock underfoot is Carboniferous – the Kinsale and Courtmacsherry formations – and the head is a designated County Geological Site.
The Lusitania Museum & Signal Tower
About halfway round, the restored Napoleonic Signal Tower at the highest point of the head houses the Lusitania Museum, and it’s the reason to stop. This is the closest land to where the RMS Lusitania was torpedoed on 7 May 1915, some eighteen kilometres offshore, going down in eighteen minutes with the loss of nearly 1,200 lives. The museum shows recovered artefacts – a deckchair, plates and cutlery among them – and a memorial garden outside lists every passenger and crew member lost. Admission is €5 per adult; the page’s old claim of free entry is out of date. On Wednesdays, Thursdays and Fridays the site runs guided Lusitania walks (€12) starting from the memorial garden, and the Grounded café operates at the tower.
Golf
The Old Head Golf Links opened in 1997 and covers most of the headland – eighteen holes, several of them run right along the cliff edge above the drop, which is what draws golfers from abroad. It’s members and green-fee visitors only; you can’t wander the course. One correction worth making: the club is not a year-round operation. It closes over winter and reopens for the 2026 season on 22 April, and the restaurant, suites and wellness facilities follow the same seasonal calendar rather than staying open all year.
Open days
A couple of times a year – usually in May and during Heritage Week in August – the club runs open days when a bus carries visitors out to the lighthouse itself. If seeing the tower up close matters to you, that’s the only way to do it, so watch the club’s listings and plan around the dates.
Getting there
Bus Éireann route 226 runs from Cork City to Kinsale; the Local Link service also reaches the area from Kinsale and Clonakilty. From Kinsale town it’s a 4.5 km walk, a short taxi or a six-kilometre cycle out to the head, following the R600 with clear signage to the car park. The Speckled Door Bar & Restaurant sits near the walking loop if you want food at the end of it. The best light for the cliffs is usually mid-morning or late afternoon, when the sea shifts from steel grey to deep blue and the shadows lengthen along the head.