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If the poetry and passion of Van Morrison's Streets of Arklow have brought you here, you may well be disappointed. While it's an ideal point from which to access the intensely pretty Vale of Avoca, the town itself is chiefly a commercial centre wrapped around an old port. ARKLOW has a long and prosperous history based on fishing, shipbuilding and the export of copper ore, pyrites and even gold, mined further up the valley. While no longer a major port, shipbuilding continues to be important - Gypsy Moth IV , Sir Francis Chichester's prize-winning transatlantic yacht now moored at London's Greenwich, was built at John Tyrrell's yard here. For a grip on the past, stop off at the Maritime Museum in St Mary's Road (summer Mon-Sat 10am-5pm; GBP1/?1.27). A delightfully haphazard collection of local finds, it claims a history for Arklow going back to Ptolemy's celebrated second-century map. It also emerges that Arklow was a major centre for arms-smuggling during the upheavals of 1798. The museum houses such curiosities as a whale's tooth and eardrum and a model ship made with 10,700 matchsticks. Arklow's beach , white sand like the rest of this part of the coast, is sandwiched between the docks and a gravel extraction plant - you may prefer to head north to Brittas Bay, or, if you have transport, five miles south to the sheltered sandy Clogga Beach .
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