The (way too big) Big Island

Day 33: July 19, 2012

The famous Aran Island Sweaters

            Inishmore (meaning Big Island) is the largest of the Aran Islands. It is almost 15 km long and 3 km wide. So when we convert that to miles it’s around 9 miles long and almost 2 miles wide. That doesn’t sound too big right? Well I probably wouldn’t think so either if I didn’t have the experience I had on it.

            A big thing to do on all of the Aran Islands is to ride bikes. Haley and Emily did not want to miss out on this “must do” part of their visit to Ireland, so we of course rented three bikes and (after a couple practice laps by Emily) were off on our adventure.

The beach on Inishmore

            We rode down past one of the beaches on the island and decided to stop by to see how the water was. Well after my experience at Tramore and the freezing cold water there, I was expecting just about the same, especially since we are much more northern in the Atlantic than we were in Tramore. I was proven completely wrong. After walking of the grey sand, which felt almost more like a mixture of sand and mud I bent down to feel the water.

            It might have been because the day was so warm and there was barely a cloud in the sky (which rarely happens in Ireland) but the water was warm. It felt like pool water on a nice 90 degree day back home in Virginia. I could not believe it. We immediately regretted the decision of not bringing our bathing suits, but who would’ve thought we had needed them?

            So after our little photoshoot on the beach we decided to head to one of the islands bigger attractions, the lighthouse. The lighthouse stands at the highest point on the island. Why in the world we thought it would be a good idea to ride bikes there I have no idea, but we started on our journey.

The highlight of Haley's trip!

It was a difficult ride up the hills of Inishmore. We had to get off and walk a couple times and we had a few stops along the way. Mainly a stop that was the highlight of Haley’s entire trip to Ireland, which was when we stopped to pet a horse that was right next to a gate on the side of the road. We stood by the horse and pet it and a donkey that came up for about twenty minutes or so. After our detour of the donkey and horse we proceeded up the hills to the lighthouse. We never made it to the lighthouse, but we would get an A for effort! We just did not have enough time to get all the way up to it, because we wanted to stop somewhere and get lunch before we had to leave the island.

We had some of the most delicious burgers ever at this little pub on the side of the road. We ate outside since it was such a gorgeous day but two things unfortunately interrupted our meals. The first of which was a little boy who fell off his bike about fifty yards away. He was wailing and screaming his lungs out for about twenty straight minutes. (We saw him later on the ferry back and he had a hole in he pants the size of a penny. Needless to say, he was overdoing it a tad.) Our second interruption was from a rooster who was walking around the picnic area outside of the pub. It would crow about every five minutes and it kept walking closer to us. One of the locals said it had attacked people before so I was ready with a full water jug to bat that thing away if it decided to come at us.

Once we finished our entertaining meals we headed back down to the town and returned our bikes and got back on the ferry. Looking back at the beach and the beautiful sky over the island made us all wish we could have stayed longer, but a pub crawl awaited us back in Galway. And it was well worth going back early for!