Not far round the coast is the tiny village of Carna where a winding road that gets ever narrower suddenly discloses a silver white strand with smooth rocks and warm rock pools. Sit here and listen to the rhythm of the ocean. Waves that have been piled up from Greenland and tamed down by the islands, trickle up the sand as gentle ripples that soothe the feet with their cool massage.

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Every summer treasure seekers come to the west to dive and look for Spanish Doubloons and Pieces of Eight, but apart from the treasure of the Girona which foundered off Port na Spania on the North Coast a month later in the same year, not much has been found. With the underwater currents grinding rocks and timber, all traces of vessels would be long gone.

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Unable to make headway against the wind, on 20 September 1588, three Armada ships had anchored half a league from Connemara’s shore. After five days at anchor, Captain Francisco de Cuellar related afterwards: 'There sprang up so great a storm on our beam, with a sea up to the heavens, so that the cables could not hold...we were driven ashore... Such a thing was never seen; for within the space of an hour two ships were broken to pieces, so that there did not escape three hundred men, and more than one thousand were drowned.'

It was a bad coast then and even today with unpredictable swirling currents and eddies, boats keep well out from the shore.

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