A story from Connemara about courage, cockles, and the Atlantic.
I’ve been leading small group photography trips to Ireland for several years now. Every group is different. Every trip finds its own rhythm. But there are moments — not planned, not on any itinerary — when something shifts and a group of individuals becomes something else entirely.
This is a story about one of those moments.
The day before, we had driven out to Omey Island at low tide. Omey is a tidal island — when the water pulls back, a wide stretch of sand appears, and you can simply walk or drive across. We were there to collect cockles with my friend Katie; she arrived on the beach with a rake, a bucket, and the kind of energy that makes you want to do whatever she suggests.
We spread out across the sand, raking and crouching, filling the bucket slowly with the beautiful blues, greens, and browns of cockles.
Katie told us she’d cook the cockles the next day, on the beach at Glassilaun.
Glassilaun Beach is one of those places in Connemara that stops you the first time you see it — white sand, water that shifts between turquoise and grey depending on the weather, the Atlantic wide open in front of you and the hills of Connemara behind. It is also, in April, a little chilly.
Katie arrived with her crate of supplies and set up in the shelter of the dunes — portable stove, butter, bread, the cockles from the day before, a bottle of wine. She had everything she needed. She was completely at home.
And then she mentioned the swim.
One of Katie’s missions in life is to get everyone she knows to join her for an open water swim the Atlantic. Not a heated pool. Not a warm Caribbean bay. The Atlantic, in Connemara, in whatever weather Ireland decides to offer on the day.
Most of us looked at the water and looked at each other.
One woman in the group said yes.
She had been saying yes to everything on this trip — quietly, consistently, with a kind of deliberate openness that the rest of us had noticed without quite naming. She understood, more acutely than most, how precious a day like this one was. How precious any day is, really.
When she said she’d go in, something happened in the group.
Nobody else was going in. That was clear. But we were all going to be there for it.
We held the towel while she changed, shielding her from the wind. We found a dry rock and made sure her clothes were folded and safe. We said the things you say — you’ve got this, it’s not that cold, it definitely is that cold. We cheered when Katie grabbed her hand and they ran together into the surf. We cheered louder when she came out.
Then we all gathered around while Katie cooked the cockles in the shelter of the dunes. Butter, white wine, the smell of the sea. We ate standing up, passing bread around, the mountain behind us and the Atlantic in front.
It was one of those days that stays with you.
I’ve thought a lot about what makes a trip like this work — what turns a group of strangers into the kind of people who hold a towel for each other on a cold Connemara beach. I don’t think it’s the itinerary. It’s not the photographs, though those matter. It’s something about being in a place that is genuinely outside ordinary life, with people who have all chosen to show up fully to it.
Ireland has a way of drawing that out.
Katie is the same way. I met her twenty-five years ago when she was a teenager, spending a couple of days with one of my photography groups. She’s been part of my circle ever since — proof that the connections you make in Ireland have a way of lasting.
If this sounds like the kind of photography trip you’ve been looking for, I’d love to have you along.
Learn more about the Ireland trip →
What is it that draws you to Ireland? I’d love to know.
Be well….be creative,
Clare
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