Two Days on Little Inisheer: An Aran Island Experience Part 1 of 3 - County Galway, Ireland

Two Days on Little Inisheer:
An Aran Island Experience

County Galway, Ireland

Pacey the Pony.

DAY 2: The Walk to the Lighthouse

We get up early. The harsh rain during the night might have tried but failed to keep us from sleeping soundly. The sun is shining again, glistening on the still wet lawn in front of our window; there is no reason to stay in bed. We have to prove to ourselves, to family at home, and to the world that there is sun in Ireland that can and must be enjoyed.

Aside from us, there are only two other content-looking guests in the breakfast room of our B&B. We order and enjoy cereal, scrambled eggs and bacon, sausage and toast, coffee, tea and orange juice – a full Irish breakfast. I get sleepy again after eating, feel like I need a nap, but I know the day ahead has only 10 more hours to give.

Today's destination is the nameless Inisheer lighthouse that stands far out on the headland facing County Clare.

Assuming that, since the island is so small, we have all the time in the world to reach the lighthouse in one day, we stroll to the little island craft-shop around the corner of our B&B. The shop's closed, yet we are told to walk up the hill and tell the owner "to come down and open up." We're indecisive. Nowhere in my own or my boyfriend's childhood education can we find the instructions to a proper way of knocking on a stranger's private quarters to tell him to open up his shop because we're tourists and only here a limited amount of time.

Spurred on by the neighbors we finally make our way to the shop owner's house. He's friendly, apologetic (I wonder if I'd be either if a couple of tourists knocked on my door), and only 10 minutes later he sways down the bumpy road on his bike. He's wearing a typical, world-famous, Irish-made Aran sweater, and he looks like he's never seen technology before, which makes my boyfriend quietly wonder if his look is real or has been groomed for the tourist who has come to seek and find "real island life."

The owner, of course, has seen technology before. As soon as he's squeezed himself behind the register, he turns on his stereo. Half expecting the sounds of Irish fiddles, I squint my eyes in amusement at the sounds of Shakira's "Underneath Your Clothes," the very un-Irish summer hit of this year.

For half an hour we "do the touristy thing" and sink into a sea of postcards, Aran sweaters, hats, scarves and socks, Celtic jewelry, posters and different sizes of Irish drums, so-called bodhrans. Then we leave, two very pretty, yet affordable necklaces my boyfriend bought for me are safely stored in my knapsack. Both pendants are made of Celtic silver: One has an oval shape with a spiral on it that supposedly represents the three Aran Islands, the other is a little Celtic cross, delicately made.

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"Hello, good people," says the young man on the pony trap. (I can't tell you how much we've used that phrase for the rest of our vacation just to amuse ourselves). His voice has the typical Irish lilt, making me wish for my tape recorder. "May I invite you to a trip around the island?"

The "good people" look at him briefly, contemplating. Then my boyfriend smiles and says, "No, thank you. We'd like to walk." I, however, am not quite sure yet. I like ponies, I like pony traps, but I don't like the fact that a little Connemara pony has to pull three people. So I pat the pony, Pacey by the name, and decide that he needs a rest, while I need a good walk.

We have a map of the island but we don't look at it. We know the general direction: east. We're explorers. Lewis and Clarke on Inisheer. Robinson and Friday on a mission. Our wanderings take us past the Café na Tra ("café on the beach"), the hill that leads up to O'Brien's castle, and the library. There, at the stone wall in front of the building, we stop briefly, to sit and drink some bottled Deep River Rock water. The sun is high in the sky now, and I peel off my yellow rain slicker.

We think about checking our email at the library, allegedly the only place on the island that has public Internet access. "It's closed," says the man locking the library, shaking his head apologetically. He sees our somewhat disappointed faces and adds, "Besides, the Internet access isn't working." Oh, gee, I think, how "mainland" we must look, how "we cannot live without checking our e-mail." I'm 29, my boyfriend is 32. We're still part of the e-mail generation, both drawn into the circle of Internet-crazed people in the mid-1990s.

"It's all right," I say to the man, smiling. "Thanks for telling us." Suddenly, I don't miss checking my email. Suddenly, I can't think of one reason anymore why I wanted to get to a computer two minutes ago. Maybe it's a reflex (only Internet place on island, must check email), but I am determined to spend my time here differently than I would at home. After all, I don't want to look back on this vacation, thinking: Well, there was this beautiful Irish-island-afternoon that I spent boxed up in the library, playing around with the computer.

My boyfriend, meanwhile, has put the Deep River Rock bottle on the stone wall. Mesmerized, he points at it. "Look through the bottle – how blue the water in it looks against the backdrop of the sky." We both stare at the bottle, impressed. I feel like a kid again, when something like the "bluest water bottle" would have drawn all my interest. Checking my email is a thing of the past. We have more important things to do!

Up on the dune, to our right, we see the High Crosses of the graveyard we visited yesterday. To our left is the Inisheer airstrip. Now, one mustn't think that there are any planes to see. Nothing, aside from a narrow runway in the distance, and a sign that depicts a plane, shows that Inisheer, indeed, is not cut off from the outer world. Aer �rann shuttles fly in daily, coming and going to Inverin, Connemara, where passengers can catch a connecting bus to Galway City.

The road diverges and we're not quite sure anymore which way to go. We could ask the friendly people on one of the five or so pony traps that have crossed our way, but we're not in a rush. We have time, and we have our own inner clock – it's set on "vacation" and "time to stroll."

My boyfriend points at the dirt on the road and says, musingly, "Let's follow the track of the manure." I glance at him and wonder whether he's really a New York City boy, born and raised in the Bronx. I, having grown up in small-town Bavaria, Germany, with quite a few cows in my vicinity, never would have thought of such a "H�nsel and Gretel" idea – follow the dirt left by the pony traps. The pony traps that go to the lighthouse.

His idea works. We step around dry manure quite frequently, as the road leads us past the only lake on the island. The area is getting lonely, and the world around is me is sharp and clear. The only colors I see are the grey of the walls, the light blue of the sky, the green of the fields, and the dark blue of the ocean. In between I discover a few brown dots – cows grazing in parcels.

Inisheer has an abundance of stone walls. Now they're closing us in from both sides. But they're low enough to let me, size 5'2", look across the fields, down the hill, to the water and even across the sea to the mainland. We've been on our feet for more than two hours and my boyfriend, knowing I'm a little tired, pulls my knapsack off my back. I feel lighter now, and it's easier to indulge in my new hobby that seems to be bordering on being obsessive: Taking pictures of every flower, every cow, every stone, and every square of ocean that blooms in, moos in, rolls and flows into the viewfinder of my camera.

Plassy wreck.

We don't see a soul while walking for about half an hour, but we know we're on the right road. In front of us appears Carraig na Finise and high up on a rock, quite a bit from the water's edge, "sleeps" the Plassy. It looks bigger than I thought, rustier than I thought, somehow proud and lonely as if to say, "Look here, I've survived the Atlantic gales. I've been here yesterday, I'll be here tomorrow and in years to come."

As we get closer to the wreck, we hear pony traps behind us. The first sounds (other than seagulls) we hear in half an hour. Friendly pony Pacey, I notice pleased, stops right next to me, and the young people on the two traps scramble down and stumble across the rocks to have a closer look at the wreck.

The rocks that lead up to the Plassy are clean, untouched, save an empty bottle of "Head & Shoulders" shampoo. "Look," I say, pointing at the bottle. "This is one of the ship's treasures. Did you know sailors used Head & Shoulders in the 1960s?"

Sliding down on a rock, I sigh – sigh at the beauty of the place and out of tiredness – and peel off a banana, letting my eyes glide over the rusty ship wreck and the roll off the surf in front of me. The shampoo bottle reminds me of – civilization. A word that doesn't seem to be appropriate for this place. Inisheer seems undiscovered, unconquered, unkown to any one but me and my love.

Two Days on Little Inisheer: Part 2 of 3

Two Days on Little Inisheer: Part 3 of 3