Overview
The Pollock Holes are a set of natural sea pools scooped out of Duggerna Reef at the west end of Kilkee, and you get roughly five hours to use them. The reef lies under the Atlantic at high water; arrive within two hours of low tide and the sea drains back to leave a run of clear pools in the rock, three of them deep enough to swim. Get the timing wrong and there is nothing to see but waves breaking over the flagstones.
They sit a few minutes’ walk from the car park beside the Diamond Rocks Café, on the same County Clare headland that carries the Kilkee cliff walk. Swimming and snorkelling are free, and the water is often several degrees warmer than the open sea because the shallow rock holds the day’s heat – up to about 20°C by late summer.
Timing the tide
Everything here depends on the tide, so check a Kilkee tide table before you set out. The pools are only properly formed, and only safe to enter, from about two hours before low water until the tide turns and starts to cover the reef again – a window of roughly five hours between tides. At mid to high tide the basins are either brimming with cold Atlantic water or fully submerged, and the flagstones become dangerous.
Swimming and snorkelling
The pools range from about a metre to two and a half metres deep and 20 to 50 metres across, so there’s room for a proper swim rather than a paddle. The water is clear enough that local divers use the site to train before heading out to sea, and snorkellers rate it among the best in Ireland. Bring a mask. In the crevices you’ll find baby wrasse, sprat, shrimp and prawns, crabs and the odd lobster, sea urchins and multicoloured anemones, plus the pollock that give the place its name and turn up for about half the year.
If you only have twenty minutes, skip the shallow first basin and make for the deepest of the three pools with a mask on – that’s where the fish are.
One warning worth taking seriously: the flagstones are slick with algae once wet, the pools change depth without warning, and there are sudden drop-offs into deeper channels. Wear water shoes or non-slip sandals rather than bare feet or flip-flops, and keep a close eye on children.
The cliff walk and Richard Harris
The same car park is the trailhead for the Kilkee cliff walk, a 5 km or 8 km loop along the top of the Duggerna cliffs that takes in the natural amphitheatre, the Pink Caves, Diamond Rocks and Intrinsic Bay. It’s also the start of a stretch of the 60 km Loop Head Heritage Trail. The cliffs are busy with breeding birds in season – fulmar, shag, chough, raven, kittiwake and gulls, with kestrel and peregrine working the updraughts.
Near the holes stands a bronze of the actor Richard Harris, who spent childhood summers in Kilkee and was, less famously, a Kilkee squash champion before Hollywood.
Getting there and nearby
Parking is at the Diamond Rocks Café car park on Kilkee’s West End; it’s a good, fairly new car park, but it fills in high summer, so come early or be ready to walk in from the town. The flagstone path to the pools starts right beside it. Buses stop in Kilkee town centre, about a ten-minute walk along the seafront.
Further up the coast, the Cliffs of Moher make an obvious second stop, and the drive out to Loop Head lighthouse at the tip of the peninsula is quieter and, for many, the better of the two. Take your litter back to the bins at the car park – the pools are cleaned by the tide, not by anyone else.