Killary Harbour
From Leenaun the water runs west between the mountains for sixteen kilometres to the Atlantic: Killary Harbour, An Caoláire Rua, the red fjord, the only fjord in Ireland by most reckonings. Mayo and Mweelrea rise on the north shore, Galway and the Maumturks on the south, and in the middle the water is more than forty metres deep.
Checked against the source on 2026-09-19.
Britishfinance, CC BY-SA 4.0 via Wikimedia Commons
The Sheep And Wool Heritage Centre, Waterfall on the 3D model; tap a pin for its page and directions.
The shape of a fjord
The flooded valley runs south-east from the sea for almost half its length, then crooks and runs straight east; it narrows after the Bundorragha River comes in, widens around Leenaun, narrows again and ends where the Erriff valley begins. The seabed rises outside the mouth, as it does in a true fjord. Whether Killary is a fjord or a shallower fjard has been argued in the journals, since it lacks sheer cliff walls above the water; the dedicated oceanographic survey came down on the side of fjord. A glacier carved it on its way to the ocean. The northern shore climbs steeply to Mweelrea, 814 metres, Connacht's highest; the southern is merely hilly.
Rivers, seals and mussels
The Erriff enters at the head, with the Aasleagh Falls just above the tide; the Bunanakee crosses Uggool beach near the mouth, the Bundorragha comes down from Finlough and Doolough, and the Lahill runs in at Leenaun. Otters live along the shore; grey and harbour seals, dolphins and sharks are seen, once even a bearded seal; salmon and sea trout run in and feed the seals. Ducks, herons, barnacle geese, mute and whooper swans and plovers use the water. The naturalist Emily Lawless rented a cottage here in the 1890s to pull every wriggling, prickly, glassy creature out of it for study. A salmon farm works at Rosroe and mussel rafts float further in.
Leenaun, Rosroe and the Green Road
Leenaun lies two-thirds of the way up the fjord, with a hotel and guesthouses; there is another hotel at Delphi in the valley to the north. At the mouth on the south side is the hamlet of Rosroe, where the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein wrote in a modest house after the Second World War, now a hostel with a plaque unveiled by President Mary Robinson in 1993. From Rosroe the Green Road, a rough track of about nine kilometres, runs back along the valley side to Leenaun. Killary Fjord Boat Tours runs a catamaran from April to mid-October.
Questions people ask
Is Killary Harbour really a fjord?
How long and deep is Killary Harbour?
Can you take a boat trip on Killary?
Where did Wittgenstein stay on Killary?
Written from Wikipedia, "Killary Harbour" (CC BY-SA 4.0), read on 2026-09-19, and from the OpenStreetMap places on the model. Nothing has been added from memory; follow the source for its footnotes.