Strewn like limestone chips hammered off the jagged west coast, the three Aran Islands – Inishmore, Inishmaan, and Inisheer – confront the wild Atlantic with stubborn grit (“Inish” is Irish for ‘island”).
The landscape of all three islands is harsh. Craggy, vertical cliffs fortify their southern flanks.
Windswept rocky fields, stitched together by stone walls, blanket the interiors. And the islands’ precious few sandy beaches hide in coves that dimple their northern shores.
During the winter, severe gales sweep through; because of this, most of the settlements on the islands are found on the more sheltered northeastern side.
There’s a stark beauty about the Aran Islands and the simple lives their inhabitants eke out of a mean sea and less than six inches of topsoil. Precious little of the land is productive.
In the past, people made a precarious living here from fishing and farming. The scoured bedrock offered little in the way of soil, so over centuries the islanders created soil by layering seaweed with limestone sand and animal dung.
Fields are small, divided by several thousand miles of “dry stone” wall (made without mortar). Most of these are built in the Aran “gap” style, in which spaces between angled upright stones re filled with smaller stones.
This allows a farmer who wants to move livestock to dismantle a short section of wall as a temporary gate, and then rebuild that section afterward. It also allows the harsh winter winds to blow through without knocking down the wall.
The islands are a Gaeltacht area. While the islanders speak Irish among themselves, they happily speak English with visitors. Many islanders have direct, personal connections with close relatives in America.
Today, about 800 people in Inishmore greet as many as 2,000 visitors a day. The vast majority of these are day-trippers like ourselves.
Fewer than 100 vehicles roam the island, and most of them seem to be minivans. Lines of vans await the arrival of each ferry, offering $20 Euro tours.
They’re basically a shared taxi service that will take you to the various sights, drop you off, and return at an agreed time and take you to the next attraction.
