THE BEAUTIFUL ARAN ISLANDS

WEATHER: Rainy, overcast 12C plus wind chill

HIGHTLIGHT OF THE DAY : The Dun Lungon Fort

BUMMER OF THE DAY: Starting the day with only 4 hours sleep

BUYS OF THE DAY:  Bar Hamburger on the island – best hangover material 8.95EUR

WORD OF THE DAY: - CAR!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

It’s not wrong it’s just different

Off to the Aran Islands this morning and there are a lot of sore heads and upset tummies from last night, which is not a great start of what is potentially going to be a massive day.  I’m feeling okay, just a little tired.  Considering I drank like a fish last night I would have expected to have pulled up a lot worse.  There were some people that shady that they thought about not going to the islands, but I think once they got there they were glad they did the hard yards.

We had to drive to the port that was 1 hour away and then we transferred onto the boat that was to take us to the island.  This was a very rocking and rolling journey of 40 minutes, and I am so glad I was just feeling tired and not hung-over, as I think the boat would have sent me over the edge, it was quite rough!!  After getting onto the island, we hired bikes and got 4.5 hours to discover all we wanted.  The weather when we first picked up the bikes was a little dodgy, so we headed to one of the 5 pubs on the island, and thought we would start with lunch and see if the weather would pass.  Well after the best burger I have had in a long time, the rain had stopped and we hit the road.

The islands inland landscape of uniquely blanketed rock surface are glazed with man-made rock walls that meander and cross all directions as far as one can see is just amazing.  How long have the rock walls been there?  How long does it take to make them?  Who made them?  It is an amazing site seeing these rock walls everywhere……..  We rode our bikes with our destination being the Dun Aonghasa Fort.  The brochure said it would take 30 minutes (yeah not on bikes) as it took us 1.5 hours to get there, but in our defence there were a lot of photo stops along the way.  We stopped at the seal colony, and this nice lady let me look through her binoculars to see them better.  We then carried on past a beautiful beach, which if the sun was out, the water would be a stunning colour, it was so clear, and a stop at a local cemetery, where a lot of the head stones were in Gaelic and also had the Celtic crosses.  The road we were riding on was wide enough for one car only, true country road style, and riding on it finally made us feel like we were in Ireland.  CAR… was a call we made when we had to pull over to the side to let it pass us and then we would carry on again.  I can’t put into words just how amazing this experience was and this is the highlight by far for this trip.

We finally made it to Dun Aonghasa, where we had to park our bikes in the bike park and then trek 20 minutes up to the fort and to get a glimpse at the cliffs.  The fort is a monument that is a world heritage site, which stands over a dramatic 300 foot cliff that spans the entire western part of the island and faces the moods of Atlantic sea.  The view from here was UNBELIEVABLE!  The wind was so strong up there that it would push you if you weren’t careful.  The thing that surprised me the most was that there were no safety railings at all at the top of the cliff or at the fort.  People wanted to get better photos of the cliffs, so they would crawl on their stomachs to get to the edge to get the shot.  Yep, well I wasn’t that brave / stupid, so I stood as close as I though was safe and snapped off some pictures that way.  Apparently one person a year falls off the cliffs and I could not think of a worse way to die.

Our ride back was a lot quicker than getting there, as we had snapped off all our photos heading out.  There was another way we could have gone back, but you needed to be Lance Armstrong with the hills and it was a little longer, so we decided to go back the way we came.  Plus we didn’t know how long the other way would take, and if we missed the 5pm ferry, which was the last for the day, then we would have to overnight on the island and then get our own way to Cork to meet up with the tour, ah yeah we’ll go back the way we came – thanks.

We got back to the town with 45 minutes to spare, so we got out of the cold weather, that was starting to turn nasty, for a beer and to watch the live coverage of the Queen in Dublin, reverting stuff.  By the time we got back on the ferry, the whole group was comatose and really couldn’t wait to get back to the hotel for showers and dinner.  We were all that buggered that we didn’t even have drinks afterwards, we all just went straight to bed, which at the end of the day to have an AFD ( alcohol free day ) – well besides the beer I had with lunch and before the boat, will not kill us and to get more than 7 hours sleep sounded like heaven.

The Aran Islands were AMAZING.  Stone walled fences, donkeys, seals, horses and scenery – if you are ever in Galway this should not be missed.  It seems a long way to get out there, but believe me it is certainly worth the effort.