After a couple of days of north-westerly wind, it is a relief to be out in the RIB and heading north to Donegal point. The slate cliffs we pass are cut and overhanging with a fantastic collection of caves and arches.
I can see the wall is steep and deep before we roll in. The confused waves just slop up against the cliffs without actually breaking. Below the surface the stormy water has cleared some of the plankton and visibility is up to about 15 metres. A big improvement, but still low visibility by west coast standards.
Near the bottom at 28 metres it's hard to tell just when we enter the cave. It is so big that all I can make out is a gradual darkening of the surface above us as we swim back under and into the cliff.
Further round, the floor of the cave is cut by a smooth winding canyon, scoured by harder stones sloshed backwards and forwards by waves surging through the cliff. It reminds me of wind scoured canyons in the Sinai, albeit underwater and on a smaller scale.
The layered slate is etched with thousands of tiny cracks, some minute and some big enough to squeeze into. A medium sized lobster hides at the back of a particularly deep crack. As we follow the crack along there are more lobsters every few metres, spaciously terraced cottages for lobsters.
We exit the far end of the cave and head back round the cliff towards our starting point. I finish my film on the overhanging wall. This would have been an excellent dive even without the cave. With the cave it is even better.
Kilkee is actually 53 minutes west of Greenwich, but the local time is more like plus 3 hours and timekeeping is typically casual. Everything starts late. In the evenings no-one gets to the pub before most pubs would be turning out back in England.
On my first night I had ordered a pint of Guinness at the Greyhound bar. “You must be the photographer from Diver magazine” says the barmaid. On my second night I try Scotts bar, also recommended by the dive centre. “Are you the photographer from Diver magazine?" says the barman, “John and Maebh will be here in a few minutes” It seems that everyone knows everything round here.
At middle rock, A kelp forest stretching down all the way to 30 metres is evidence of the usual visibility. Swimming down and along the slope of kelp I round a corner and am suddenly on a section of wall. “As if by magic” the scene has changed from mundane to spectacular. The rock is made of the usual horizontal layers of slate, all eroded at slightly different rates to provide plentiful crevices for marine life to hide.
Round another corner and the wall cuts back into a chimney, dead men's fingers and tiny jewel anemones lining the ridges of slate. A bit further along and a small tunnel cuts through the wall.
Just as it looks as if the scene is changing back to a kelpy slope, the next corner reveals another section of wall. The dive has become one surprise after another. The dive ends at an enormous circular scour hole in the rock, separated from the wall by a wide archway.
Circular scour holes are formed by wave action rattling rocks about on the seabed. The rocks are set rolling with a circular motion and drill nice round holes. Some dive sites seem to have just the right combination of wave action and rocks and are riddled with scour holes.
Just south of Kilkee we drop above the north side of a reef, falling in open water down a vertical wall. The top of the reef is in 7 or 8 metres, covered with the usual forest of kelp, and the wall drops down to 28 metres. The instructions here are to turn shoreward with the wall on my right, heading into the reef.
The wall becomes one side of a wide and shallow canyon, and soon after a narrow winding side canyon cuts back into the wall. The side canyon is reminiscent of the canyon in the cave at Donegal point. Smooth, rounded and overhanging sides, but on a much grander scale. Not wider, but deeper stretching from 7 metres down to 24 metres.
Then I come to the snake pit, a deep scour hole in the floor of the canyon. The bottom is full of loose rocks and the pit is not full of snakes, but spider crabs.
Heaven knows why a spider crab would want to live at the bottom of a hole at the bottom of a canyon, so far away from the kelp. But maybe they didn't choose to live there. Maybe as the name snake pit implies, the crabs fall in and are trapped, being unable to climb out again.