Sport
Achill has a GAA, football club which competes in the intermediate championship and division 1C of the Mayo League. Achill Rovers who compete in the Mayo & District League Welcome Inn Hotel Division 1 and Achill Golf Club. Card games, including Whist and 24 card game are also popular on Achill. The island's primary recreational outdoor center is Achill Outdoor Education Centre. Achill Island's rugged landscape and the surrounding ocean offers one of the most perfect locations for outdoor adventure activities in Europe from surfing and kitesurfing on Keel Beach to sea kayaking on the north shore. Fishing and watersports are popular with tourists and locals alike. Sailing regattas featuring a local vessel type, the Achill Yawl, have been popular since the 19th century, though most present-day yawls, unlike their traditional working boat ancestors, have been structurally modified to promote greater speed under sail. The island's waters and striking underwater sites are occasionally visited by scuba divers, though Achill's unpredictable weather generally has precluded a commercially successful recreational diving industry.
Read more about this topic: Achill Island
Famous quotes containing the word sport:
““Justice” was done, and the President of the Immortals, in Æschylean phrase, had ended his sport with Tess. And the d’Urberville knights and dames slept on in their tombs unknowing. The two speechless gazers bent themselves down to the earth, as if in prayer, and remained thus a long time, absolutely motionless: the flag continued to wave silently. As soon as they had strength they arose, joined hands again, and went on.
The End”
—Thomas Hardy (1840–1928)
“For generations, a wide range of shooting in Northern Ireland has provided all sections of the population with a pastime which ... has occupied a great deal of leisure time. Unlike many other countries, the outstanding characteristic of the sport has been that it was not confined to any one class.”
—Northern Irish Tourist Board. quoted in New Statesman (London, Aug. 29, 1969)
“If a walker is indeed an individualist there is nowhere he can’t go at dawn and not many places he can’t go at noon. But just as it demeans life to live alongside a great river you can no longer swim in or drink from, to be crowded into safer areas and hours takes much of the gloss off walking—one sport you shouldn’t have to reserve a time and a court for.”
—Edward Hoagland (b. 1932)