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.
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Famous quotes containing the word sport:
“What sport shall we devise here in this garden
To drive away the heavy thought of care?”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)
“I wish glib and indiscriminate critics of industrialists had some conception of the problems that have to be met by factory management.... General condemnation of employers is a favorite indoor sport of the uninformed intelligentsia who assume the role of lance- bearers for labor.”
—Mary Barnett Gilson (1877–?)
“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)