Mizen Head
County Cork, Ireland
Spectacular Scenery Unsung Heroes
Mizen Head is located at the extremity of a peninsula in County Cork and is a popular tourist attraction, noted for its high cliffs of hard grey strongly-folded Old Red Sandstone, upon which Atlantic swell and storm waves break heavily.
A long bay is backed by curving sandy beach-dunes, through which a stream finds an outlet from a tidal lagoon to the sea. The low hummocky sandy terrain is much like machair (a fertile low-lying grassy plain found on some of the north-west coastlines of Ireland and Scotland, in particular the Outer Hebrides).
Text courtesy of Sarah Gatley (Geological Society of Ireland and Irish Geoparks Forum)