Mulroy Bay () is a sea

loch ''Loch'' ( ) is a word meaning "lake" or "inlet, sea inlet" in Scottish Gaelic, Scottish and Irish Gaelic, subsequently borrowed into English. In Irish contexts, it often appears in the anglicized form "lough". A small loch is sometimes calle ...

on the north coast of

County Donegal County Donegal ( ; ) is a Counties of Ireland, county of the Republic of Ireland. It is in the Provinces of Ireland, province of Ulster and is the northernmost county of Ireland. The county mostly borders Northern Ireland, sharing only a small b ...

Ireland Ireland (, ; ; Ulster Scots dialect, Ulster-Scots: ) is an island in the North Atlantic Ocean, in Northwestern Europe. Geopolitically, the island is divided between the Republic of Ireland (officially Names of the Irish state, named Irelan ...

. Mulroy Bay is the most convoluted of the marine

inlet An inlet is a typically long and narrow indentation of a shoreline such as a small arm, cove, bay, sound, fjord, lagoon or marsh, that leads to an enclosed larger body of water such as a lake, estuary, gulf or marginal sea. Overview In ...

s in north-west

. It is approximately 12 km long in a north-south direction. The entrance to the bay is a narrow embayment leading to a winding entrance channel 10 km in length. This channel varies in width and depth, with three significant narrows only 100–150 m across, where the current reaches maxima of 3-5 knots. It opens into the

Broad Water Broad Water, or Broadwater ( Welsh: ''Aber Dysynni'') is a salt water lagoon near Tywyn, Wales formed from the silted up estuary of the River Dysynni. In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the estuary was used by the shipbuilding indust ...

, an open shallow sea lough 8 km from north to south and 2.5 km from east to west, generally less than 20 m in depth and with many small rocky islands and islets. Settlements founded on the bay include Milford, Kerrykeel and Cranford. The English name of the bay comes from ''Cuan na Mhaoil Ruaidh'', the original

Irish language Irish (Standard Irish: ), also known as Irish Gaelic or simply Gaelic ( ), is a Celtic language of the Indo-European language family. It is a member of the Goidelic languages of the Insular Celtic sub branch of the family and is indigenous ...

name for the bay which means 'Bay of the Red Current' or 'Bay of the Red Stream'.Patrick McKay, ''A Dictionary of Ulster Place-Names'', p. 115. The Institute of Irish Studies,

The Queen's University of Belfast The Queen's University of Belfast, commonly known as Queen's University Belfast (; abbreviated Queen's or QUB), is a public research university A public university, state university, or public college is a university or college that is St ...

, Belfast, 1999.

References

External links

Mulroy Bay on Ecoserve.ie
{{coord, 55, 09, N, 7, 41, W, display=title, region:IE_type:waterbody_source:GNS-enwiki Bays of County Donegal Sea loughs of the Republic of Ireland