Baile an Bhuinneánaigh · Co. Kerry
A links course, a Clinton statue, and two beaches split by a castle ruin.
Ballybunion is a small north-Kerry seaside town that became famous for golf and never quite got over it. The Old Course - the long links above the Atlantic - is on every serious top-twenty list in the world, and the town has spent a hundred and thirty years arranging itself around the fact. The bronze Bill Clinton on Main Street, frozen mid-swing, is the most-photographed thing in the place. Locals walk past him without looking.
Off the course, the town is a working seaside village with two beaches, a castle ruin between them, and a tradition of seaweed bathing that predates the golf by a couple of decades. Collins' baths have been running since 1932 - same family, same idea. You sit in a wooden tub of hot seawater and serrated wrack and you come out claiming things about your skin you cannot prove. People keep coming back.
It is fifteen kilometres from Listowel, which means John B. Keane country - the playwright lived and pulled pints up the road - and a lot of the writing weekends end up out here for the air. Come for the golf if golf is your thing. Come for the cliffs and the baths and a long walk on the strand if it isn't.
