John Dolan: Why Spike is jewel in the crown of Cork tourism

The story goes that one day in the 1940s, a few soldiers on Spike Island off Cobh decided to fire the 6-inch guns lying idle in their fort. I guess they thought it would be a blast.

It sure was.

Now, a 6-inch gun doesn’t sound much, but this was merely the size of its ammunition. The huge, then state-of-the-art guns had been left on Spike by the British when they handed over their so-called Treaty Ports to Ireland in 1938, and they had a range of 20km. They had never been fired in anger.

That day in the 1940s, the military lads decided to test them out. They didn’t warn anyone nearby, and one can only hope they put silencers in their ears when they fired the shells 20km due south out to sea.

Luckily, they hadn’t faced them the other way and fired north - as the shells would have caused a bit of a panic when they landed in Glanmire!

However, the good people of Cobh weren’t so lucky that day. Such was the ferocity of the blast of the guns, that many windows in the town were shattered.

Suffice to say that the next time the guns were tested, they relocated them to underground tunnels to soak up the blast, and warned all the residents of Cobh to open their windows.

That was just one of the many fascinating stories I heard last Sunday when I finally ticked one of Cork and Ireland’s best-loved tourist activities off my bucket list - a tour of Spike Island.

There’s something about living close to a tourist attraction that can repel locals. I wonder if the person living closest to Disneyland ever visited it? Certainly, when I lived in London for two years, I hardly visited any of the tourist sights which had attracted me like a magnet on previous short visits. I guess that familiarity can breed contempt.

Finally, last Sunday, the opportunity arose to visit Spike and see what all the fuss is about, and my family headed to Cobh.

On a beautiful, sunny August day, with a cruise liner in dock, the pretty town was a sight to behold, teeming with international tourists. Cobh, you’re a lasher in your own right!

But we had Spike Island in our sights - the tour of it began a decade ago and quickly won a World Travel Award as Europe’s leading tourist attraction.

Having booked our tickets online, we boarded the boat to ferry us 15 minutes across the water to Spike.

We were met by a guide who gave us a 10-minute safety speech along with a few pointers, then left us to our own devices to roam the 104-acre island.

We chose to go on a fascinating guided tour that lasted about half an hour, which left plenty of time to look around.

You have three-and-a-half hours and, lads, it wasn’t enough! Though we could have stayed and tried to board a later boat, we resolved to go back again another day.

The island has a rich history, including, of course, as a naval and military fort, as a village in its own right, and latterly as a prison.

Now a tourist attraction with no inhabitants, it boasts more than a dozen museums and exhibitions, shedding light on its long and storied past. There are also scenic walking trails offering stunning panoramic 360-degree views of Cobh and Cork Harbour.

I lived in a flat in Cobh facing Spike Island for a year before the place was reinvented as a tourist destination, and never realised it was so big and had so much to offer the visitor.

Other fascinating nuggets of information gleaned from the tour included the fact that when Queen Victoria visited Cobh, after whom it was named Queenstown, in 1849, her boat got stuck on the sandbank between the town and Spike Island for several hours. She must not have been amused by that!

It conjured up a mental image of the town’s mayor in full salute position for hours on the Cobh quay, whispering out of the side of his mouth to a colleague: “Christ, can yer one still see me?!”

The island was being used as a youth prison in the 1980s after a spate of joyriding and anti-social activity by bored, unemployed lads, and a display as part of the Spike tour recalls a famous riot there in 1985.

It was apparently eventually ended not by diplomacy, but by a furious mammy of one of the inmates with a loudhailer, insisting her boy get down from the roof that minute! I so much want that story to be true.

There is also a museum there remembering the republican prisoners who were held captive on the island during the War of Independence, of whom a few managed to escape this Irish ‘Alcatraz’.

If, like me, you’ve been waiting to view this jewel in Cork’s tourism crown, then my advice is to bite the bullet and do it. You won’t regret it.

The Spike Island tour is open seven days a week until October, and there is also a café and gift shop there, and other refreshments at hand.

Our tour guide mentioned there were hopes of further investment in the Spike Island site in the future, transforming more of the old buildings there into visitor attractions. Let’s hope that comes to fruition.

It’s truly a captivating place to visit for all the family.