WHERE COPPER MEETS EMERALD

Squaring up to the Celtic Sea in the country's south east, Ireland's Copper Coast offers a romp through geological and human history, taking in wild coves, rocks that predate the dinosaurs, saintly sites and ghostly mining ruins. Turning back to nature, local foragers, chefs and artists are putting this lesser-visited area in the spotlight

- KERRY WALKER

The October sun, pale as moonlight, is struggling to break through a wall of cloud that's heralding a storm. Waves whip badtemperedly off the Celtic Sea, crashing against dark fangs of rock and bringing a strong hit of brine to wild Garrarus Beach on Ireland's Copper Coast. Exposed by the ebbing tide, the foreshore is webbed with seaweeds, which, to the untrained eye, all appear identical.

“Look," my foraging guide, Marie Power, whispers, “it's like a miniature world; a sea garden." A narrow beam of torchlight illuminates the frills and fronds of emerald sea lettuce, gold-green wrack, purple-red dillisk [dulse) and thick, amber ribbons of kelp. Crouching by the rock pools, Marie is a water-shoed queen peering gracefully into a chest of brilliant jewels.

"We used to drive the length of the Copper Coast - before people started calling it that - every weekend when I was a child," Marie says. “My mum would say: 'This is the most beautiful place on earth, we don't need fancy foreign holidays.' I didn't believe her, but she was right.”

Everyone raves about western Ireland's Wild Atlantic Way, yet this coast is just as raw and fiercely lovely — and there's barely a soul in sight. The result of volcanic activity that started on the ocean floor 460 million years ago, this spectacularly buckled and contorted coastline looks like a window onto the dawn of creation. Every rock, sea stack and pleat in the strata exposes another layer of geological history.

Marie has been a seaweed evangelist in these parts for the past two decades, reviving the age-old Irish tradition of gathering, cooking and eating the slimy stuff, which she swears is the secret to living to 100.