Inspired by the tragicomic – but oh so beautiful – film ‘The Banshees of Inisherin‘ we spent our Easter Holidays in Ireland this year. Inisherin is a fictional island, filmed partly on The Aran Islands at the mouth of Galway Bay on the west coast of Ireland. The name Inisherin can be translated from Gaelic to ‘The Island of Ireland‘. It doesn’t get more Irish than that!
The Aran Islands consist of 3 islands: Inishmore (the largest island), Inishmaan (the middle island) and Inisheer (the easternmost island). The latter is also the smallest. The highest number of residents was 3,500 around 1840. Today’s population is just under 1,500, of which just over half live in Inishmore. However, the number is steadily decreasing, and that is easy to observe.
The islands were inhabited thousands of years ago, and at that time they had little or no soil at all. The agricultural landscape has been painstakingly built up by humans. Seaweed and kelp was collected from the sea, mixed with sand and then the soil was protected with stone fences.
Here, Irish is spoken everywhere, and notices and signs are not always translated into English. Many ‘mainland’ Irishmen spend the weekend here, as many as 1,000 day-trippers in the summer season. But as soon as the last boat has left (around four o’clock), it all calms down and you quickly get in contact with the locals, who really like you spending the night on the islands. With one big BUT: The exception is hen/stag parties! The description when we booked the room was that all bachelor parties will be refused entry, they will not get anything refunded and end up having major problems finding other accommodation, since the islanders notify each other! Except that, the inhabitants are very friendly and helpful.
We took the boat from Galway to Inishmore and stayed a couple of nights. A fascinating place! Business today is based on tourism, and when you get off the boat you are greeted by an army of taxis, minibuses and horse-drawn carriages offering rides around the island. We rented bikes instead, we think that’s the absolute best way to discover the place.
The weather on the islands is stably unstable, you can expect a good mixture of wind, rain and sunshine every day. The average temperature is between +6 degrees in January and +15 in July. The flora of the islands is therefore a blend of arctic, alpine and Mediterranean flora, with a growing season that lasts almost the whole year.
The east side of Inishmore is a quite friendly lowland with white beaches and seal colonies. It’s nice to swim here! In fact, you don’t have to go many meters away from the quay in Kilronan for a swim, the bay has several nice, sheltered beaches with beautiful, clear water.
According to our gentle hostess, this is where the children at Inishmore learn to swim. A bit unpleasant, though, when you get ‘that quicksand feeling‘ on the way out.
Nevertheless, we got an excellent Easter morning swim at Inishmore! A number of cars drove past extremely slowly in the background of the bathing beach, so it’s probably not common to bathe at Easter time. But great for us, as often before, we had the beach to ourselves.
What we didn’t do at Inishmore was having a dive in the 50 m deep ‘Wormhole’. The west side of the island consists of high limestone cliffs. Here the sea hits with great force, there is nothing that slows down during the 3000 km of Atlantic Ocean between New Foundland and Inishmore.
Based on the description, we thought that ‘Yes! We have to try this!’. … but quickly realized that it was just not the right thing to do, under the current circumstances!
There have been cliff diving competitions here twice (2014 and 2017), but after all the scaffolding and ramps were washed into the sea during another attempt later, it is agreed not to arrange any more such events here in the immediate future.
There are swimming pictures on net from the Wormhole and it is probably not very dangerous if the tide and the weather cooperate. And if you have a plan for how to get back up! But unfortunately, every now and then, they have to pick up someone who died here.
After a trip to the Wormhole, a pub visit is just right. And what could be better than enjoying an Aran Island Gin? Flavored with kelp harvested on ‘The Aran Islands’, it has lots of umami. And the taste? It tastes what it is flavored with…
