Qualla: Omey Island

Omey Island: Introduction

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit edited by M.Minderhoud, Public domain. Twice a day the tide goes out at Claddaghduff and the Atlantic surrenders a temporary road. Painted arrows on stakes mark the route across the strand to Omey Island. At low water you can drive across in an ordinary car, or walk it in twenty minutes; at high water the channel is deep enough to submerge a vehicle entirely. The crossing is a country lane that runs through the sea. Locals time their day around it. Tourists who do not time their day around it learn fast - either by waiting for the next low tide or by listening to the laughter from the shore as they watch their hire car begin to swim.

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Image: edited by M.Minderhoud | Public domain

Omey Island: St Feichín's Pagans

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Trifolium-RF, CC BY-SA 4.0. Omey's Irish name is Iomaidh Feichín - Feichín's bed, or Feichín's seat. The saint himself was the seventh-century abbot of Fore in Westmeath, and according to the old Latin hagiologists he found the inhabitants of Omey still entirely pagan when he arrived. The article published ...

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Image: Trifolium-RF | CC BY-SA 4.0

Omey Island: The Church the Sand Buried

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit G.Mannaerts, CC BY-SA 4.0. At the western edge of the island sits St Feichín's Holy Well. Near it stood a medieval parish church that the wind buried over centuries under drifting sand. Most of its stones had stayed in place, but the building was completely invisible. In 1981 the parish priest decided enou...

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Image: G.Mannaerts | CC BY-SA 4.0

Omey Island: The Last Resident

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Keith Salvesen, CC BY-SA 2.0. The population of Omey peaked in the early 19th century when hundreds of people lived there. The National School opened in 1883 and closed in 1973. By 1988 there were three households left. For more than thirty years the only full-time inhabitant was Pascal Whelan, a former Holly...

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Image: Keith Salvesen | CC BY-SA 2.0

Omey Island: Horses on the Beach

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Julian Matz, CC BY 3.0. Once a year, in late summer (usually July or August), the Omey Races bring crowds back to the strand. The event was reestablished in 2001 after a long lapse. Horses gallop on the wet sand at low tide, riders silhouetted against the Atlantic, spectators lined along the high water ...

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Image: Julian Matz | CC BY 3.0