Kilkee is a seaside town on the Atlantic coast of west Clare, built around a horseshoe-shaped bay that is sheltered from the ocean by the Duggerna Reef. It was a small fishing village until the 1820s, when a paddle steamer service from Limerick to Kilrush made it the summer resort of Limerick's merchant families. They built the substantial houses that still line the seafront, and when the West Clare Railway arrived in 1887 the crowds grew bigger. Charlotte Brontë, Alfred Tennyson and Henry Rider Haggard all came to stay.
The sheltered beach is the heart of the town, and it regularly wins a Blue Flag. At its west end, on the flat rocks below the cliffs, the Pollock Holes are natural pools refilled by every high tide. The same rocks are good for snorkelling and diving: Jacques Cousteau rated Kilkee's marine life highly. Beyond them the Kilkee Cliffs walk heads west along the clifftops past sea stacks and the wreck sites of ships driven ashore by Atlantic storms.
A statue of the actor Richard Harris was unveiled in the town by Russell Crowe in 2006. The town is busy and cheerful in summer, and out of season many places close up. Kilkee is also the gateway to the Loop Head peninsula, which runs west to the lighthouse at Loop Head, past the natural arch at the Bridges of Ross and the village of Carrigaholt, where dolphin-watching boats sail in summer.
Bus 336 runs from Ennis via Kilrush to Kilkee in about an hour, and bus 333 comes down the coast from Lahinch. The nearest airport is Shannon. To go further than the town, you really need your own wheels.