Shoptalk: Cooley Peninsula

The Cooley Peninsula is best known as a hideout for leprechauns and IRA men, but there are some terrific shops hiding out there too.

The most phenomenal of all is Greenore Cooperative, a perfectly preserved, still functioning, 19th century co-operative shop, opened in 1873 as part of the newly built port and railway town just outside Carlingford. This place is truly a revelation: the centre piece of Ireland's only completely planned Victorian village.

Still today the original school house, barracks, dock workers homes and wooden chalets stand alongside it on Euston Street and Anglesey Terrace. It is hard to believe you are actually in the 21st century.

The shop is run as a labour of love by Brian and Ann Larkin and sells the usual vitals of Irish human nourishment: tea, Mikados, potatoes, Saxa salt, Kleenex tissues, dog food and soda crystals, along with Ferdia chocolates from Ardee for life's little treats. There's also fishing equipment, used golf balls and century-old receipts and bric-a-brac.

Upstairs, in what was the Assembly Rooms for 19th Century variety acts, is now a museum of the port's history, while downstairs is a terrific model railway exhibition. Do try and support this eerie remnant of a previous age.

Five kilometres down the road is another unique venture – a sweet shop dedicated to those elusive American candies we see in movies. Owner, Kenny McElroy, has American ex-pats dropping €60 a go on Babes Ruths, Lifesavers, white-chocolate Kit Kats and rare flavours of Skittles.

The shop also stocks a range of gluten-free, sugar-free and low-carb sweets and offers free samples of homemade fudge. For the connoisseur though, it's their range of rare liquorice that make the journey to Cooley worthwhile; there's sweet or salty, chewy or hard, from Italy and Sweden. Not to mention Aniseed Twists, Violet Vats, Twinkies and an irresistible range of Italian fruit jellies.

Just outside Carlingford is The Apothecary which serves as the reception for Ogham Oils, a producer of aromatherapy products for 20 years, also the HQ of On Yer Bike bicycle rental company and a holistic store stocking a wide range of Weleda, Vogel, Biona, Terra Nove, Bach and Pukka products, alongside an intriguing range of Celtic Tree Oils by Róisín Carroll.

They are said to contain the quintessence of different Irish trees, including elm, elder, sloe, wild rose, ivy willow and chestnut. These oils are not distilled essentials oils, but are somehow infused with the vitality of the tree through a process which Carroll picked up through intuition decades ago. And clients have been seeking her out for decades.

[ www.faceook.com/pages/Greenore-Co-op/119339431438690 www.facebook.com/CandyfordSweetCompany ]

[ www.ogamoils.ie/ ]