Gallivanting!

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I thought it would be fun to write about our recent holiday in Ireland. The Aran Islands are a few miles of the west coast, about halfway up. They were put on the map by the Irish playwright JM Synge and it's well worth reading his short but evocative book about his four visits there around the turn of the century before you go. They have remained a bastion of Irish-speaking culture ever since.

I think the best comment on the Arans I've heard is that they're "Irish to the power of two". Life there was harsh. The landscape is divided into minute fields with hand-built dry-stone walls everywhere. Clearing stones from the fields was the first step towards cultivation. There was almost no soil. It had to be painfully scraped out from between the stones, then sand was added and copious amounts of seaweed to improve fertility. There are almost no trees on the islands. Gateways were constructed by piling large stones into a gap and just kicking them out of the way when you wanted to enter the field.

A wealthy man was one who was describe as having the land for two cows. Fish and potatoes made up the staple diet of the islanders. Interestingly, only one person died of starvation in the Potato Famine; presumably they were isolated from the windbourne blight. We still saw many potato patches; only the largest of the three islands, Inis Mor, has anything resembling a supermarket. That's your only food shop. No shortage of places to buy Aran sweaters, however. In fact, the sweater industry is less authentic than it appears; it was generated by the Congested Districts Board arond the end of the nineteenth century, an attempt to bring local employment to parts of Ireland where the population could not be supported by the land.

We had a glorious day walking around about half of Inis Mor, blessed with perfect weather. Sunny but not too hot. We saw a colony of seals basking offshore, the famous Iron Age fort of Dun Aengus and many of the aforementioned tiny fields, filled with colourful wild flowers. Stopping at a cafe, we feasted on salad and the best ham I've ever had, home-cured, sweet but not too salty, and carved in slices a centimetre thick.

It can be difficult to separate fact from fiction in these places. We noticed replicas of traditional cottages, about a metre high, in a few gardens. One source told us they were built for the fairies, but a more pragmatic one claimed they were a lucrative sideline for a local craftsman.

The Island roads are almost traffic free, since visitors aren't allowed to bring cars. You're met off the boat by horse-drawn jaunting cars, numerous minibuses and bicycle hire operators. This aspect of the local economy reminds me of another favourite place of mine, the Isles of Scilly, where each morning on the main island, St Mary's, you troop down to Hugh Town harbour and select a boat to take you, weather permitting, to one of the off-islands.

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