The Maharees - Na Machairi in Irish, meaning the plains - is technically a tombolo, a sandy spit that joins what was once an island to the mainland. Five kilometres long, narrow enough to walk across in twenty minutes, the peninsula extends due north from the Dingle Peninsula coast at Castlegregory. To the west lies Brandon Bay, open to the North Atlantic and famous for its long swells. To the east lies Tralee Bay, sheltered and shallower, the home water of Fenit Harbour. The peninsula is mostly dune at its southern end, transitioning to earth and rocky ground at the northern tip. Beneath the surface sand is a foundation of limestone that resurfaces in the offshore Magharee Islands - the Seven Hogs - that the peninsula points toward.

Bufo calamita - the Natterjack toad - is one of Ireland's two native amphibian species (the other is the common frog), and the only species of toad. It survives in Ireland in only a few coastal pockets in west Kerry: the Castlemaine Harbour area, the Maharees, and a few smaller sites. The toad is smaller than the more familiar European common toad, marked with a yellow stripe down its back, and equipped with one of the loudest mating calls in the European amphibian world. The breeding season runs from April to June. The toads spawn in shallow ephemeral pools among the dunes, which warm quickly in spring sun and dry quickly in summer. The drying is essential - it eliminates predatory fish that would otherwise eat the tadpoles. The toads have been here since the last glaciation. They depend, now, on the dune system continuing to make pools.

Brandon Bay on the western side of the peninsula opens to long Atlantic swells that wrap around the coast and break on the long beach. With the right wind and tide, the bay produces some of the best surfable waves in Ireland. Sandy Bay welcomes beginners. The exposed beaches further north reward the experienced. Several windsurfing and surf schools operate from the dunes. The eastern side, on Tralee Bay, is more sheltered - good for kayaking, beginner sailing, and flat-water windsurfing. A PADI-certified dive centre at Scraggane Pier at the peninsula's northern tip runs trips out to the Magharee Islands, whose waters are among the clearest on the Irish west coast. The peninsula in summer is a small adrenaline economy.

The Maharees holds three hamlets: Fahamore at the northern tip, Kilshannig on the western shore, and Candeehy further south. Together they contain perhaps a few hundred year-round residents, supplemented in summer by holiday-home occupants and visitors at the various campgrounds and caravan parks that line the dunes. Castlegregory Golf and Fishing Club operates a nine-hole links course at the southern base of the peninsula, on the shores of Lough Gill, the freshwater lake whose waters drain into Tralee Bay. The peninsula's economy is a composite: fishing, farming, tourism, sport. The pubs are quiet in February and overflowing in August.

Fenit Harbour, the main port of County Kerry, sits in the lee of the Maharees on the southeast side of Tralee Bay. The harbour is sheltered from the large Atlantic swells that would otherwise sweep across the bay because the Maharees absorbs and refracts those swells before they reach the shipping channels. The geological accident that made the tombolo, in other words, made the port. Yachting facilities, a marina, a working pier, and the RNLI lifeboat station all depend on the same long curving spit of sand that makes the surfing on the other side. Coastal erosion is a perennial concern - the dunes shift, the Atlantic chews at the western beaches, and a major storm could in principle do to the Maharees what the 2008 storms did to Rossbeigh sixty kilometres south. So far, the Maharees holds.