Cork Harbour Trail

Cork Harbour Trail

St George slaying the dragon atop the old B&I Shipping offices, Penrose Quay, Cork (a view now lost to modern office-block building)

The Meeting of the Waters

the north and south channels of the Lee meet here below the old Custom House quays

Blackrock Castle 19th cent. Gothic, built over the Elizabethan Mountjoy's Tower

Little Island and the upper harbour

Harper's Island, just off the busy N25

The mainland, from Harbour Point on Little Island

Harbour Point 'castle' – Belvedere folly on Little Island

Carrigrenan nature trail, Little Island

Martello tower on the rail line to Great Island, seen from Carrigrenan

Industrial Composition: the former Net Nitrogen plant at Marino Point on Great Island

Sailed Away: the old pier at Carrigrenan

Fota Island folly

shell midden on the Foaty Island channel

Memento Mori: solution holes in limestone, Foaty Island channel

on Slatty Water: Eileen MacDonagh's Sea Buoy

The East Cork mainland, seen across Slatty Water from Little Island

to Great Island: the rail viaduct across Slatty Water

Spring Sowing: Great Island from the Belvelly channel

April Light: Great Island from the Belvelly channel

Brown Island quay: note the skeletal remains at such a charming anchorage

Belvelly channel, near Brown Island

Ballyvodock Quay, Belvelly channel

period outbuildings at Ahanesk House, Ballyvodock

all washed up, Owenacurra Estuary

fortified house at Ballyannan near Ballinacurra on the Owenacurra estuary

tidal pool, Ballyannan

fished out, Ballinacurra

old churchyard interior, Ballinacurra an Eliz. Olafson, d.1812, mother of Ellen Shanahan, lies under the upright stone on the left, one of a number of inscriptions in this churchyard which point to seafaring connections

limekiln chamber located beside the churchyard at Ballinacurra a particularly finely worked example of a once ubiquitous feature of the Irish countryside

Installation Art: Loughatalia, Owenacurra estuary

Morning Light: Loughatalia lagoon on the Owenacurra estuary

Cobh, from White Point

Haulbowline

Irish Lights tender, Granuaile, passing the pilot station at Cobh

Cuskinny Marsh nature reserve, Cobh

Cuskinny strand

Cuskinny strand (West) boathouse and hidden dock

view to Marloag

Marloag strand, Great Island

East Ferry marina, under Marloag wood

Holy Trinity Church (1865-1867) French Gothic in grey limestone and red sandstone across the channel from East Ferry

Saleen Creek, Rostellan, looking westwards to Cobh in the distance

Siddons Tower, Rostellan (1727) so named by the 5th Earl of Inchiquin for Sarah Siddons, 1755-1831, the celebrated English tragedienne who may have been a house guest here at the now demolished Rostellan House

Rostellan dolmen: this site would originally have been dry land, an indication of how much sea levels have risen since prehistoric times

East Grove House on Great Island, orig. 1800-1805, in the Cottage Tudor style Trafalgar Tower in the background

Rathcoursey Heights in East Cork, viewed from the NE corner of Great Island

East Cork: looking north from Great Island across the Belvelly channel

Rosslague Martello tower (1813) guarding Great Island against invasion from, oddly, the North

See also on ISSUU.com/shorecrab Cork from the ground up: an architectural walkabout and Cork banks-of-the-Lee walk

Home and Dry: near completion of an anti-clockwise circuit of Great Island, looking east to the woods of Bagwell's Hill