Salterstown Beach

I was over on the east coast friday last in a place called Salterstown, Co Louth. It lies between Drogheda and Dundalk on the coast. It's a funny place because there is nothing there just fields a very narrow road right on the coast. However what a little gem of a location. I mean you pull over and stop your car (otherwise nothing can get passed) and take two steps and your on the beach.
We have had some very cold weather the passed few days with clear sky's and frosty mornings but wonderful sunrises and sunsets.

So with this in mind I checked the times for sunrise and the tide times. How may you ask ? Well with my best new toy, The iPhone. The amount of software you can get for the iPhone is amazing, and some of it is free to download. Using two of the app's for sunrise and tide times I knew at sunrise we will have a high tide. Not good, but none the less I still wanted to go over and see this location for myself. I have seen some wonderful colour photographs from Salterstown form another photographer called Richard Hatch. Richard lives over in that general direction and have known him for a good few years now. I have linked his name to his site with a selection of the colour images from here.
As he said himself "Salterstown is a fantastic location indeed but you really have to work out the tides and lighting up times. I have been there many times and got nothing but when you plan it correctly it turns out great. Its just a pity there isn't a wee bit more scale to the place. Everything is quite low if ye know what i mean...!".

When you see the place you will understand what Richie means by "quite low" as there is only a few rocks, some big ones, but nothing that stands out. However there is some great rock formations and with the right light wonderful. The background is taken care of by the mounatian ranges around Carlingford and The Mourne Mountains which can be seen in my image above, just about. I have a have a different image of just the mountains and will post that later.
With this image the elements were against me. High tide, low clouds, and the sunrise in the wrong location ie slightly behind the mainland so sun had to rise a good bit to light up the foreground. With the low cloud cover this would not happen. No problems, a return visit or maybe a few visits will solve that problem. I have checked the tide time and this coming Monday looks good so a return trip is on the cards.