Driving in the car, I heard a joke on the radio, “How can you tell the difference between Summer and Winter in Ireland?” (I lived the response today.) The answer is “The rain gets warmer.”
Ireland is having the worst Summer in anyone’s memory. Everywhere I go the locals are bantering about the rain, pouring at a heavier than normal frequency. The month of April was apparently perfect and then a warmer Winter set in.
Taking things in stride I drove from Galway to Rossaveal to catch the Aran Islands Ferry with Inis Mhor, the largest bit of offshore rock, as the target.
The rain threatened to stop while we waited for the boat, but after traveling the channel it opened up for off-boarding at the island’s tiny wharf.
After dropping my backpack off at the hostel the mental debate and “wetness tolerance” index began.
It costs 10 Euro to either rent a bike for the day or take a two hour guided mini-van tour. Armed with a Gortex jacket and a spirit to see the local life I took the bicycle option.
Inis Mhor is literally one large tessellating rock. Somehow in the cracks vegetation began to grow and in places a very thin layer of topsoil established.
To delineate property lines and help this process the natives build stone walls out of seemingly every stone manageable enough to lift. With the constant moisture grasses grow almost while you wait. Tiny paddocks feed livestock practically perpetually.
In spite of the lush grass waiting in the background, blackberries are just too tempting a treat for this cow.
Riding a bike on the island means sharing the road with all kinds of vehicles, from minivans to horse carts.
One of the benefits of taking the bike is the ability to stop and take photos. When wind blown red hair and a horse caught my eye, I knew this would be the classic Irish shot.
Proud of my accomplishment, I shared the picture with an Irish woman, later that evening in the hostel. Her response stunned me, “Oh my God, where’d ya fin’ dat?” She laughed, then called her friend over to look at the picture. Now they were both laughing. “Dat’s not-a horse, dat der is a spotted cow.” I was pretty sure it was a horse, but what they later explained is that Irish horses are typically a single color and this one looked like a local breed of cow. That was when I had to confess that the red haired woman in the picture was actually Dutch, so my classic Irish photo was a total sham.
Apparently, true Irish horses sould look more like these.
For some reason there is something inherently moving or monumental about a Celtic Cross that demands attention.
The main target for the day was Dun Aonchus Fort, a pre-historic stonewalled settlement high on the cliffs.
With the aggressive weathering washing the island practically clean, archeologists struggle to put a date on the site. The best guess is somewhere between one thousand and five hundred BC.
The scale of the fort is impressive with over eleven acres of enclosure, but the cliffs steal the show.
The howling winds and slippery footing made for an “all fours” scramble to the sea cliff edge. Tourists lay prone on the edge while their traveling partners leaned against the wind and held tightly to the daring photographer’s ankles. Others stood on what seemed to be a perfectly safe perch for a “photo-op”, not knowing that their footing was literally hanging over the waiting ocean.
Climbing down from the fort the quaint Irish precipitation nuance turned into a cold nuisance.
Even the horses cowered under the drubbing rain.
The wind whipped across the treeless countryside and howled through the power lines.
There was only one thing left to do, push past the classic houses...
... and on back to the hostel to make dinner in the protection and relative warmth of a kitchen.
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