Inisheer

Day Fourteen: June 16^th

When a person comes as far west as Doolin, and there is a ferry to the Aran Islands two kilometers away, one makes plans to go.  We decided to go for a day trip and signed up the day before when the weather was completely perfect and the seas as flat as a pancake.  We woke up to our first bad weather of the trip, windy and drizzly.  Not great weather for a sea crossing but good enough. 

Inisheer was incredibly rocky.  The locals over the century had piled rock after rock in pens and walls and homes.  They created their own soil from manure, human waste, scraps, seaweed and sand.  They keep cattle and sheep in these plots.  Their horses, called Shires, make do on the paths between pens. 

Speaking of horses—when one arrives at Inisheer there are about ten carts with a pretty shaggy booted horse waiting to take you on an hour long tour.  I wish we had taken one of them up on their offer but I was having chilblains and needed a warm drink in my hands.  I was punished for ignoring the locals by having my phone drop into the toilet at the cozy bar where we ordered coffee.  I dried it in the ubiquitous hand dryer, powered it down and hope it will recover.  The phone has been my camera and my GPS while driving.  I will have to wing it now, using maps etc. and also make requests of Steve for the odd photos I am led to take.

We walked to the ridge of the island and from there joined a trail around a lake and out to the Wreck of the MV Plassy.  This cargo vessel was carrying a load of whiskey, stained glass and yarn in Galway Bay when a storm hit it on March 8, 1960 running it aground at Inisheer.  The crew was rescued by locals.  Another storm two weeks later lifted her up to a nearly high and dry spot.  One of the most photographed wrecks in the world she remained almost intact until last winter when another huge storm shifted the Plassy’s position and crumpled her midsection. 

There is a spring on the west side of the island.  This supplies the town's water that is stored in three water cisterns.  The local baker and café owner Mary said every summer their water almost dries up as four hundred students who come for a gaelic language week,  plus boatloads of tourists, all flush toilets through the day.  She made the best lemon cheesecake and beautifully cabled scarves for sale.  Asked whether island life was hard she said no, it just takes planning.  The Doolin ferries are not their real lifeline to the main Irish island but rather a winter ferry to Rossaveal, to the north in the Connemara, is their usual route.  Mary described how they could leave early in the morning, get into their rusty car in Rossaveal, drive to larger stores, even to Galway, and get back in the evening.  In the winter the boat rides are in the dark.

After our very fine lunch at Mary’s SeaWeed Café we returned to Doolin, switched to a smaller boat and took our very rocking and rolling tour of the Cliffs of Moher from the sea.  We had seen how close the tour boats could get to the magnificent spire full of bird nests but for safety's sake that was not happening today.  We were glad when we regained land. 

The face of the spire is absolutely covered with nesting and roosting seabirds, including some puffin.

We had dinner again at McGann’s and waited for the music to start around ten PM.  This night's group was billed as Cyril, Blackie and Geraldine on the sandwich board outside.  Tonight we heard masterful uilleann pipes played by Blackie O’Connell, bouzouki played by Cyril O’ Donoghue and another man playing some kind of metal recorder.  There was a great singer on a few of the songs, Geraldine Mac Gowan who also worked at McGann's as a waitress. 

The pub may have been run-down, the wifi frustratingly intermittent, the food rather predictable, but the music made us want to move in for about a year.  Steve now wants to study bouzouki with Cyril!