We left Kilkee before eight, with the fog still sitting on the bay and a flask of tea rolling around the back seat. By the time we reached Cross the fog had lifted, and the road had narrowed to the width of a tractor and a prayer. That's the thing about Loop Head: the drive out is the decompression chamber. Fifteen kilometres of hedgerow and glimpsed ocean, and by the lighthouse you've forgotten what you were worrying about.
The Cliffs of Moher get the coaches. Loop Head gets the weather, the birds, and almost nobody else. This narrow finger of land at the far southwest of County Clare is, for our money, the finest clifftop walking on the entire Wild Atlantic Way — and you can still have it largely to yourself.
Why Loop Head first
The peninsula runs fifteen kilometres from Kilkee to the lighthouse at its tip, with the Atlantic on both sides — you're never more than a few fields from salt water. The cliffs are lower than Moher but wilder: sea arches, blowholes, and the great detached stack at the lighthouse where thousands of guillemots and razorbills nest in early summer. Stand at the tip on a clear evening and you can see the mountains of Kerry floating across the mouth of the Shannon, and nothing else moving but birds.
The lighthouse loop
Park at Loop Head Lighthouse and walk the headland circuit — an easy hour that packs in the sea stack, the Kerry views and, if you time it for dusk, the kind of light that made us want to paint it. The first time we stayed too long and walked back to the car in the half-dark, salt on our lips, completely happy. Our print Loop Head — Lone Figure at Dusk was made from exactly this walk — the lone figure is real, and so was the silence.
The Bridges of Ross
Halfway down the peninsula's north side, the Bridges of Ross were once three natural sea arches; the Victorians came by steamer to admire them, and the sea has since taken two back. One magnificent arch survives. In autumn this little cove becomes one of Europe's most famous sea-watching sites — gannets, shearwaters and skuas streaming past the point while men with telescopes murmur numbers to each other like a rosary. Storm days here are unforgettable, and entirely free.
Kilbaha and the quiet south shore
The south shore road through Kilbaha is the slow way back: a pub, a pier, and long views across the Shannon to Kerry. Stop at the little church and ask about the 'Little Ark' — a wooden altar on wheels that the parish rolled onto the shore between the tides in penal times, because the landlord wouldn't allow Mass on his land and no law reached below the high-water mark. West Clare in one story: stubborn, faithful, and quietly ungovernable.
When to go
May and June for nesting seabirds and cliffs pink with thrift; September and October for sea-watching and empty roads; a settled winter day for the biggest seas you will ever stand safely beside. Bring proper boots, a windproof layer, and respect for unfenced cliff edges — this is genuinely wild coast, and it doesn't do railings.
Go deeper
Our guidebook Wild Beauty: County Clare — A Walking and Field Notes Guide covers Loop Head walk by walk, with 28 illustrated field notes on the wildlife and geology you'll meet along the way. And if the light catches you the way it caught us, the Loop Head paintings are in our print collection — signed, and printed to order.