Sea birds make the loveliest messes

BEHIND the gigantic sand dunes on Strandhill beach in Sligo is an otherworldly place, littered with the shells of eaten snails and sea creatures.

It’s a sandy valley carpeted with colour and flanked by long, thick green grass. Crushed shells in this graveyard catch the evening light, shaking off their deathly feel and beaming out pretty pastels – pink, green, blue, purple.

Tread lightly though. Slimy slow coaches still living trudge on in the grasses in their hundreds.

Sligo’s Shelly Valley