Pirate Island, Off the West Coast of Cork by Anthony Toole

As we stepped onto the pier and turned to watch the boat chug away on its 10-minute journey back to Baltimore, I felt marooned. The feeling became more acute when I noticed that most of the dozen or so passengers who had accompanied us on the ferry had vanished.

The Baltimore we had left is the one on the south-west coast of County Cork, not its illustrious namesake in Maryland, which it resembles not at all. Ireland’s Baltimore is a picturesque little port at the end of a cul-de-sac from Skibereen. It was never designed with the car in mind, much less the tourist coach, and makes no concessions to either.

Only the volume of traffic present restricts access and parking, so that on a busy day it may take as long as 30 minutes to enter or leave the village. The shops, bars, restaurants and houses, painted in brilliant colours, have been squeezed against the harbour by the surrounding hills, and have bulged up the slopes and out onto the coastal cliffs.

There is one notable American connection, however, though it may well be apocryphal. The former Presidents Bush claim that their ancestors came from here, and while this is treated with some scepticism in political circles, the surname Bushe has been common in the area for several generations.

We had parked the car, with some difficulty, and taken the first ferry of the day to Sherkin Island. Other ferries would be making the short crossing roughly every two hours until 9pm. The infrequency of trips, together with the fact that the ferries cannot carry more than about 15 passengers, restrict the number of visitors to the island. We were looking forward to a quiet, relaxing day.

Sherkin Island is about three miles long by a mile wide and lies only just off the mainland, but it feels like the last outpost of civilization. It rises above the Atlantic in a series of cliffs that act as a bulwark between Baltimore harbour and the southerly gales.

Constant battering by the sea has hollowed caves out of the rock, and sculpted deep coves, so that in places the island narrows to no more than a few hundred yards. Horseshoe Harbour, Kinish Harbour, West Bay - the names sound as though plucked from a boys’ adventure story.

Indeed, piracy was once a major industry here, providing the wealth of the powerful O’Driscoll clan, which ruled more than 1,000 square miles of west Cork during Elizabethan times. Dun na Long castle, on the northern peninsula of Sherkin, was one of nine built around Baltimore and the nearby islands by the O’Driscolls.

In 1537 the castle was destroyed during an invasion of the island by men from Waterford, in response to the seizure of one of their ships that had sought shelter in Baltimore harbour. Also sacked was the Franciscan abbey, the ruins of which stand on a slight rise above the pier.

We strolled along the narrow road in the direction of the sandy beaches of West Harbour, passing slopes of dense shrubbery, heather and bracken, and along the shore of Kinish Harbour, fringed by bladder wrack. Two girls, also passengers on the ferry, walked ahead of us. A woman stood on a ladder, painting a house. There was no other sign of human activity.

After 30 minutes, we reached the beaches. Small, sandy and rimmed by low cliffs, they were deserted, and lapped by clear green water. Only the peninsulas of Kerry and Cork, and the tiny islets known as Carbery’s Hundred, lie farther west into the Gulf Stream. The largest of these, Cape Clear, hung above the sea, its head hidden in the morning haze.

Throughout the afternoon, small groups joined us on the beach, each arrival signifying another ferry trip from Baltimore. At no time, however, were there more than a few dozen.

There was no rowdiness or vulgarity here, only the soft sounds of well-behaved people enjoying a desert island beach, the beauty of which would rival anything in the Mediterranean. It is unlikely that Sherkin will ever be any different.