This week, for example, Peter Sutherland is in his holiday home in Goleen, a tiny place with two pubs and a shop at the end of the Mizzen. For the man with the Midas touch who stands to get £70 million from the flotation of Goldman Sachs, and who was in the headlines again last week when he became co-chairman of the merged BP-Amoco giant, it marks quite a change of pace.

But that's what August in West Cork is all about. It's about chilling out. About sinking into the heady, heavy atmosphere of summer days in Ireland's most beautiful corner. And the capital of this outpost of indolence is the hamlet of Schull.

Against a background of stunning scenery, a magnificent coastline and an atmosphere that is often magical, people even those who are highly influential and celebrated somehow fade into insignificance. In West Cork nobody bothers too much about who you are. It is an important part of the charm of a place that draws people back again and again.

Last weekend was a typical enough summer weekend in West Cork. Peter Sutherland performed the honours at the opening of a pontoon in Crookhaven on Sunday.

Margaret Jay, newly appointed by Tony Blair as Leader of the House of Lords, opened an exhibition of paintings by Lynn Dennison at the Angela Flowers Gallery at Downeen in Rosscarbery on Saturday.

Jeremy Irons loves Skibbereen because it is a place where he does not get the film star treatment. Here, he is just another person enjoying a pint and a quiet chat at the bar, recognised but left to his own devices. West Cork tolerates everything except arrogance and, as such, it attracts a certain type of down-to-earth person.

After a few days of recharging the batteries in such an atmosphere, visitors find that there is no shortage of places to live it up if, that is, your idea of living it up is a great meal in a stunning restaurant or some unrivalled sailing, driving or walking, as distinct from a pulsating, throbbing headache-inducing rave.

Sitting by the dockside watching fishermen and sailors mingle, the rich, the famous, the backpackers and the locals share their love of the sea and the heady cocktail of tourism, scenery, craic, socialites and world-class sailing can prove too exhausting to be relaxing.

For canny locals and visitors in the know, there's an art to extracting the magic from Schull and its sister West Cork hamlets. There's something about the quiet fishing port nestled at the foot of Mount Gabriel that proves addictive, even for those wise enough to savour its pubs and parties in moderate doses.

It's easy to understood the bliss experienced by the sailing fraternity after all, a base in Schull combines the finest Hedonistic options with easy access to such legendary yachting sites at the Fastnet, Cape Clere, Crookhaven and, for the brave hearted, Goleen. Few sights are as overlooked, yet imposing, as travelling a few miles west of Schull to sit by the coast road at night and watch as the loom of the Fastnet Lighthouse flickers over the rock-strewn headland.

Hardly surprising, then, that tourists swear that stout tastes somehow sweeter sitting on the wall outside Billy Sullivan's pub in Crookhaven, marvelling at how Marconi chose this rugged West Cork peninsula for his first trans-Atlantic telephone link; two generations after the great Italian moved on, his relatives are still spending their holidays here.

To locals, the area is simply known as the Golden Triangle. Framed between Crookhaven, Schull and Glengarriff, it is now the most expensive holiday home location in Ireland and a mecca for the wealthy, the famous and the socially discerning.

If you've money to spend and a social life to maintain, West Cork and the headlands around the Mizen are your only stop.

Yachting buffs like Dr Tony O'Reilly and Aer Lingus boss Bernie Cahill opt for the sophistication of Glandore and Schull. Both villages combine stylish regattas throughout the summer with all the attractions of urban life: good restaurants, superb pubs and a plethora of organic food shops and gourmet coffee houses.

Jeremy Irons chose Ballydehob, while film producer David Puttnam preferred the more low-key attractions of Skibbereen. Agriculture Minister Joe Walsh opted for a holiday home in Glengarriff, while Maeve Binchy remains a frequent and a favourite summer visitor to the renowned Eccles Hotel.

Insofar as it is ever possible to generalise, it can be said with some authority that people who favour West Cork prefer to induce their headaches in ways other than through loud raves. You don't come here for the club scene, yet there is a clubby sort of atmosphere, particularly among the many regulars. This can be defined as inclusive rather than exclusive; there are no strict codes of behaviour or dress, and all you need to belong is a love of the familiar and of West Cork.

You can get away any time you like, but you can socialise too. There is spectacularly good food and wine available in a range of singular and memorable restaurants where the atmosphere is as unstuffy as the winds around Mount Gabriel. Hare Island Cottage is an example. The food prepared here by John Desmond gets written up in publications like The New Yorker, but guests walk three quarters of a mile along a badly paved, unlit road, sometimes through drenching rain, from an open boat to the tiny cottage, where an atmospheric and gastronomic night to remember awaits. There is no menu choice you take what you get but they come from all over West Cork and much further afield.

Blair's Cove near Durrus is convenient to Schull, Ballydehob, Bantry and Glengarriff, and many people travel from afar to sample the delights on offer. Shiro at Ahakista is said by those who know about such things to offer the best Japanese food in Europe. Annie's at Ballydehob is as close as possible to impossible to get into on a Saturday night, but there is never any need to go hungry, because there is a wide choice of great pubs and eateries dotted around this seductive and wonderful coast.

On a self-catering holiday you can stock up on delectable cakes and breads from shops like Adele's or The Courtyard at Schull. There are great butcher shops, a huge selection of fresh fish and, even if your guests have all suddenly become vegetarian, you can do most of the essential shopping locally. If you have over indulged you can walk it all off on some of the best wilderness countryside available in Europe.

But no matter what the choice of West Cork haven, the influx of domestic notables and foreign glitterati has helped underpin one of Ireland's most remarkable property booms.

``Twenty years ago, you couldn't give away sites up boreens. Now even old sheds are attracting monopoly money bids, particularly if they've a coastal view,'' local IFA official Dan Joe O'Donovan said.

For Cork-Kerry Tourism (CKT), the emergence of West Cork as Ireland's upmarket destination has proved a boon. The flood of yachtsmen, in particular, to West Cork has helped offset the disappointment of poor visitor numbers to CKT's more traditional destinations, such as Killarney, Blarney and Dingle.

While Schull still remains the sailor's first choice, other quiet villages such as Baltimore, Castletownshend and Crookhaven have coined in on the boom.

Leading West Cork auctioneer Charles McCarthy estimated that property prices in Crookhaven, Baltimore and Schull have been the focus of the largest percentage increase anywhere in Ireland.

``Even Ballsbridge hasn't seen the kind of price increases that have taken place here,'' he claimed. ``The problem we have is that we don't have enough houses or suitable sites to cope with demand.''

Most West Cork auctioneers have opened their own websites in the Internet, and receive queries from throughout the US, Britain and Western Europe every week. The scale of the tourism boom is further underlined by the explosion in services. Fifteen years ago, Schull boasted three restaurants now the area is rivalling Kinsale as a gourmet centre.

A 30-minute drive offers local holidaymakers a bewildering array of specialist ethnic restaurants, ranging from Japanese, Indian and Italian to the more favoured local options, all of whom hail their seafood without too many contradictions as among the finest in Europe.

And where once West Cork's finest accommodation was restricted to a belt around Bantry/Glengarriff and coastal villages, plush new B & Bs, guesthouses and hotels are springing, mushroom-like, from behind every scenic hillock.

Millionaire West Cork construction boss John Fleming underlined the scale of the area's tourism aspirations with his recently-opened Inchydoney Hotel. Boasting heated seawater in its swimming pool and seaweed health treatments as a standard feature, Inchydoney marks West Cork's aim to establish itself as the Cannes of Irish tourism. As well as the Celtic Ross, it's been joined by new and expanded hotels in Baltimore (Harbour Hotel) and Skibbereen (Eldon Hotel). Ironically, Cork County Council's new Development Plan may be the only brake exerted on the property and tourism boom.

Under the plan, ribbon developments have been all but banned. Charles McCarthy stressed that the demand for property, coupled with the implications of the Development Plan, has created bewildering price trends.

``It's hard to believe, but one West Cork landowner now wants £150,000 for 40 acres of pure rock along the coastline. The property has planning permission for one house and that's what makes it priceless.''

At the humbler end of the scale, the boom has been music to the ears of caravan site owners, particularly in Inchydoney and Barleycove, which are both making a dramatic comeback.

Despite the sprawling size of existing parks, operators estimate that it's only a matter of time before they are are full and waiting lists develop.