Doohoma, Dumha Thuama, Co. Mayo

Dumha Thuama · Co. Mayo

A pier, a headland, and the same bay that delayed the Normandy landings.

Dumha Thuama means Tuama's mound - a personal name attached to a piece of ground long before there was a village here at all. What grew around it is small: a scatter of houses on the south shore of Blacksod Bay, a pier, the head that gives the place its outline. The bay to the north is the dominant fact of the place. You look at it from whatever direction you approach.

The fishing was always the reason. Lobster and crab, mainly - the bay's sheltered water suited the pots, and the boats working out of Doohoma joined a tradition that ran up the whole Erris coast. Like most places on this shoreline, the population peaked in the nineteenth century and has been small since. What remains is the genuine article: a working coastal settlement that has not been reshaped for visitors and shows no sign of starting.

The Erris isolation is real. The nearest town - Belmullet - is fifteen kilometres by road, and that road takes you through bog and low hills with nothing between them. Geesala, closer and also small, is the most immediate neighbour. Out here the phrase 'off the beaten track' stops being a selling point and starts being a statement of fact. Come knowing that, and the place makes sense.

The broader bay carries a history that belongs mostly to Blacksod Lighthouse at the peninsula's southern tip - in 1944, a young woman named Maureen Sweeney recorded a weather reading there that reached Eisenhower's headquarters and caused the Normandy invasion to be postponed by twenty-four hours. That story is Belmullet's to tell in full; Doohoma just shares the same water.

Walk score

Pier to headland in twenty minutes

Coords

54.0811° N, 9.9486° W

01 / 05

At a glance.

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

01 Doohoma Head

The headland that juts into Blacksod Bay.

Doohoma Head pushes out into Blacksod Bay from the south, giving the village its shape and its shelter. Walk it at low tide and the bay opens in three directions - the Mullet Peninsula, Achill beyond it, and the Atlantic behind everything.

Stories & lore → 02 Blacksod Bay

Sheltered water on a coast that is rarely sheltered.

The bay runs between the Mullet Peninsula and the north Mayo mainland. Lobster and crab boats have worked it for generations. Doohoma sits on its southern shore, close enough to feel the bay rather than just see it.

The bay → 03 The pier

Small. Working. Worth the walk down.

The pier at Doohoma is not for tourists. Crab and lobster pots stack up at its edge. Stand there long enough and you understand what the village is about. The view north across the water is the best one for free.

Getting there →

02 / 05

Stories & lore.

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

Blacksod, June 1944

The bay and the weather

On 3-4 June 1944, Maureen Sweeney - a twenty-one-year-old meteorological assistant at Blacksod Lighthouse, at the far south of the Mullet Peninsula across the bay from Doohoma - recorded a deep Atlantic depression that nobody else in the Allied network was positioned to see. The reading was relayed to Valentia, then to Eisenhower's headquarters at Southwick House. General Stagg used it to forecast the storm bearing down on the English Channel. Operation Overlord was pushed back twenty-four hours - from June 5th to June 6th. The seas on the 5th, historians later concluded, would likely have wrecked the landings. Maureen Sweeney lived to 99. The lighthouse where she worked still stands. The bay they share looks much as it did. The full story belongs to Belmullet; this end of the water is where you look across and understand why the lighthouse mattered.

The working shore

The lobster men

Lobster and crab fishing out of Doohoma follows a pattern as old as the settlement itself. The bay's relatively sheltered water - sheltered by the Mullet Peninsula to the west, by the mainland on the south and east - allowed small boats to work the pots more days of the year than the open coast would. By the nineteenth century, when Doohoma and Geesala were noted as trading ports for building materials heading inland to Westport and Castlebar, the fishing had already been the economic spine of the place for generations. The trade in timber and stone came and went with the roads. The lobster pots are still there.

Distance as a way of life

The Erris edge

The Barony of Erris has always been one of the most remote inhabited territories in Ireland - cut off by bog to the south and east, by the Atlantic to the west, and by the difficulty of the roads. Pre-Famine population figures were high for somewhere so isolated; post-Famine emigration was correspondingly severe. Doohoma, sitting at the edge of the edge, absorbed both pressures. The Gaeltacht - the Irish-speaking heartland - runs up through Geesala and the Mullet; Doohoma sits on its fringe, Gaeltacht in culture if not always in official designation. What stayed was a community that knows how to be small without making anything of it.

03 / 05

When to go.

There is no bad time. There are different times.

Spring

Mar-May

Quiet, clean light across the bay. The bay calms down after winter. Best if you want the coast without other people in it.

◉ Go

Summer

Jun-Aug

Warmest. Long evenings. The bay at dusk from the pier is worth the journey. No crowds - this is not that kind of place.

◉ Go

Autumn

Sep-Oct

Atlantic weather picks up. Worth it if you want drama. The light in October is exceptional, but the wind is not negotiable.

◐ Mind yourself

Winter

Nov-Feb

Very exposed. The roads through the bog can be grim. Come if you know what you are doing on an Atlantic coast in January.

◐ Mind yourself

04 / 05

What to skip.

Honestly? Don't bother.

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

Expecting a pub or a café at the village

There isn't one. Belmullet is the nearest town with food and drink. Plan accordingly before you drive out.

Treating the pier as a tourist attraction

It is a working pier. Give the boats and equipment room and move on if someone needs to use it.

Getting there.

By car

From Belmullet: take the R314 south and east toward Geesala, then follow signs to Doohoma - about 15 km, mostly single-track through bog. From Ballina: allow 1h 30m. There is no shortcut.

By bus

No direct bus service. Belmullet is the nearest Bus Éireann stop; private transport required from there.

Next on the tour

Co. Mayo

Belmullet

Fifteen kilometres. The town that makes Erris run - and the full Maureen Sweeney story is told here.

Co. Mayo

Bangor Erris

East across the bog on the N59. The road junction for Erris and the river valley beyond it.

Co. Mayo

Geesala

Closest neighbour. Gaeltacht village, Synge country, quiet in the way Erris is quiet.

Co. Mayo

Binghamstown

Twelve kilometres south-east, where the road forks with the Atlantic on three sides.

Co. Mayo

Fallmore

Ten kilometres east round the bay, a saint's church and a holy well and nothing else, which is plenty.