Achill Sound, Gob an Choire, Co. Mayo

Gob an Choire · Co. Mayo

The mainland side of the channel. The bridge is the village.

Achill Sound is the village at the bridge. Strictly speaking it sits on both sides - Polranny on the Corraun mainland, Achill Sound proper on the island - but the channel is so narrow and the bridge so short that you'd struggle to call them two places. The Irish name, Gob an Choire, means the mouth of the cauldron, which is exactly what the channel does in a spring tide. The water boils.

It's a working strip rather than a postcard. A SuperValu, a hotel, a couple of bars, a school with fourteen pupils, the GAA pitch, the start of the Greenway, and the road on towards Keel and Dooagh and the cliff country that put Achill on the map. People stop here for a pint, a paper, a tank of petrol, and then drive west. The village is fine with that. It has work to do.

Don't make this your base if you came for the photographs. Keem and Slievemore and Croaghaun are still half an hour away by road. Do make it your base if you came for the Greenway, or you want a quiet end to the cycle, or you fancy a pint at Connaughton's after a day on the island and a bed within walking distance of it. Two nights is plenty. One night is the standard.

Population

265

Walk score

Bridge to the far end of the village in ten minutes

Founded

Bridge first opened 1887

Coords

53.9278° N, 9.9392° W

01 / 09

At a glance.

Three things every local will eventually mention. Read these and you've already understood more than most day-trippers do.

01 The bridge

A swing bridge that opens for boats.

The Michael Davitt Bridge crosses Achill Sound from the Corraun mainland to the island. The first one was a swing bridge opened in 1887 by Michael Davitt himself. The current version is the third - finished in 2008, 225 metres of it, lit at night.

Stories & lore → 02 The island starts here

Keem and the cliffs are still 40 minutes west.

Achill Sound is the gateway, not the destination. The famous Achill - Keem Bay, the deserted village at Slievemore, Croaghaun cliffs - is a half-hour drive further. The village itself is a working strip of shops, a pub, a hotel, a school, and the channel.

What to skip → 03 The Greenway

42km of old railway, ending here.

The Great Western Greenway runs from Westport along the bed of the old Achill branch line - closed in 1937, paved in 2011 - and finishes at Achill Sound. Hire a bike at Polranny, opposite the GAA pitch, and roll back inland.

Walks & outings →

02 / 09

The pubs.

None of these are themed Irish pubs, because they don't need to be. A few that earn the trip:

Connaughton's Bar

Locals, sport, music

Pub at the Achill Sound Hotel

Attached to the Achill Sound Hotel (Óstán Ghob A'Choire) on the main street. Two bars, a beer garden, pool and darts, every match on the telly. Live music regularly. The bar Achill Sound actually drinks in.

Alice's Harbour Bar

Tourist-leaning, food-focused

Bar & restaurant at the Achill Island Hotel

At Óstán Oileán Acla on the harbour side. Continues the older Alice's Harbour Inn name. Reliable bar food, ceol agus craic in season, quieter in winter. Good for a sit-down dinner before a session next door.

03 / 09

Where to eat.

Place	Type	€	Local note
Sweeney's SuperValu	Supermarket, butcher counter, deli	€	Properly stocked supermarket with a butcher counter and a deli-coffee dock. Mon-Sat, 7.30am to 8.30pm. The pragmatic answer if you're self-catering on the island or building a Greenway lunch.
Achill Sound Hotel restaurant	Hotel restaurant	€€	Dinner in the hotel attached to Connaughton's. Steaks, fish, the kind of menu that knows its audience after a wet day on a bike.
Alice's Harbour Bar & Restaurant	Bar food & dinner	€€	Bar lunches and a proper evening menu. Seafood when the boats have been out. Roll the dinner straight into the music in the bar.

04 / 09

Where to sleep.

Place	Type	Local note
Achill Sound Hotel	Hotel (Óstán Ghob A'Choire)	Family-run, on the main street, with Connaughton's downstairs. Generations-deep. The bed is two minutes from a pint and the pint is two minutes from the bridge.
Achill Island Hotel	Hotel (Óstán Oileán Acla)	On the harbour side, a short walk from the bridge. Alice's Harbour Bar attached. The other obvious bed in the village.

05 / 09

Stories & lore.

The reason to come back. The things every local will eventually tell you about, usually after the second pint.

The first bridge, 1887

Michael Davitt opened it

Until August 1887 the only way across the channel was at low tide on foot or by a ferry that drowned people. Mayo County Surveyor Glover drew up the bridge in 1883, the Board of Trade approved it for £5,000, construction started in 1886, and on 31 August 1887 Michael Davitt - Land League founder, Fenian, Mayo's own - opened it. It was a swing bridge, designed to pivot for boats. A second one replaced it in 1949, built by J.C. McLaughlin of Dublin and the biggest bridge an Irish company had ever built. The current third bridge, finished in 2008 for €5 million, is 225 metres long and lit with LEDs after dark.

The current that won't be argued with

The Bull's Mouth

North of the village, between Achill and the small flat island of Inishbiggle, the channel narrows to about a hundred yards and the tide rips through it. It's reckoned one of the strongest tidal currents in Europe. At dead low you can wade across to Inishbiggle. People have tried. Don't. The water turns over here so fast that the islanders run their own boats and have done since long before the bridge.

Hanged in Newport, 1799

Father Manus Sweeney

Born in Dookinella on Achill, ordained in Paris, came home in 1798 to a curacy in Newport. When the French landed at Killala that August, Father Sweeney acted as interpreter for Captain Boudet after the Races of Castlebar. He spent the next nine months on the run - six weeks under a turfstack at Camploon, weeks more at Glenlara, finally captured back in Achill in May 1799. They hanged him publicly on the Market Crane in Newport on the 8th of June. He's buried in Burrishoole Abbey. There's a monument at Dookinella where he was born.

Heinrich Böll, 1958-1985

The German writer at Dugort

Twenty minutes north of the village, at Dugort, sits a small white cottage that the German Nobel laureate Heinrich Böll bought in 1958. His Irisches Tagebuch - Irish Journal - was written there and published in 1957, and it sent a generation of German readers west looking for the country he described. He kept the cottage until he died in 1985. The Achill Heinrich Böll Association bought it from his family in 2003 and runs it now as a writers' and artists' residency. Worth knowing if you find a German reading group on the bridge in July; that is what they're doing here.

06 / 09

Things to do outside.

Wear waterproofs. Bring a sandwich. Tell someone where you're going if it's the mountain.

The Great Western Greenway (Achill end) Hire a bike at Achill Sound Bike Hire, opposite the GAA pitch at Polranny - right at the trailhead. Mulranny is 13km of easy traffic-free riding. Newport is 30km. Westport is 42km. Most people get the shuttle one way and freewheel the other.

42 km one-way back to Westportdistance

Full day by biketime

Kildavnet Castle and the south road From the bridge, take the road south along the eastern shore of Achill Island. Kildavnet (Carrickkildavnet) Castle is a four-storey 15th-century tower house, a Granuaile stronghold, sitting right by the water with the view back to the Corraun hills. Free, unguarded, no visitor centre. Bring a torch if you want to climb it.

8 km drive south of the bridgedistance

1 hour with stopstime

Bridge and harbour loop Across the bridge, down past the Achill Island Hotel to the harbour, back up the western side and across again. Do it at sunset and you get the channel lit and the bridge LEDs coming on. The whole village is in this loop.

3 kmdistance

40 mintime

07 / 09

When to go.

There is no bad time. There are different times.

Spring

Mar-May

Greenway empties out, days lengthen, the Atlantic is still in winter mode but the light is unreal. Pubs warm up around St Patrick's Day.

◉ Go

Summer

Jun-Aug

Achill proper (Keem, Keel) is busy and the road through Achill Sound carries the lot of it. Stay over and walk it in the evening when the day-trippers have gone home.

◐ Mind yourself

Autumn

Sep-Oct

The locals' season. Greenway in low light, big skies, sessions back to themselves, the road through the village quiet again.

◉ Go

Winter

Nov-Feb

Half the island shuts. The hotels and SuperValu trade through. Storms close the bridge to high-sided vehicles a few times a year. Properly off-season - book ahead and check what's open.

◐ Mind yourself

08 / 09

What to skip.

Honestly? Don't bother.

If a local was sitting beside you, this is the bit where they'd lean in.

Expecting Achill Island scenery from the village itself

Achill Sound is a working strip on a narrow channel. The cliffs and beaches you came for - Keem, Keel, Slievemore, Croaghaun - are 30 to 45 minutes further west by road. The village is the gateway, not the view.

Wading across to Inishbiggle at low tide

The Bull's Mouth is one of the strongest tidal currents in Europe. The window is narrow, the tide turns fast, and the channel doesn't care that you read about it on a forum. Take a small boat from Bullsmouth pier or admire from the shore.

Driving through and never stopping

Half the people who pass through Achill Sound are on their way to Keem and they don't slow down. The Greenway terminus, the bridge story, Kildavnet Castle, the Heinrich Böll cottage at Dugort - all of those are worth a stop, and none of them are at Keem.

Looking for Calvey's butchers in the village

Calvey's of Achill - the famous mountain-lamb butcher - is in Keel, not Achill Sound. Worth the 20-minute drive west if you're cooking. Don't expect to find it on the bridge.

Getting there.

By car

Westport to Achill Sound is 42km on the N59 via Newport and Mulranny - 45 minutes. Castlebar is an hour. From Galway allow 2h 15m via Westport.

By bus

Bus Éireann route 450 connects Westport to Achill via Newport, Mulranny and Achill Sound, multiple services daily. The same bus continues out to Dooagh on the island.

By train

Nearest station is Westport (terminus from Dublin Heuston, 3h 15m). Then bus or hire car for the last 42km.

By air

Ireland West Airport (NOC) at Knock is 1h 30m by car. Shannon (SNN) is 2h 45m. Dublin (DUB) is 3h 30m.