The other side of Inishmór

Our feet crunched the gravel road, but as we neared the crest of the hill the sound of the ocean grew louder than our steps. We could not contain the anticipation. We took off in a run to see the apocalyptic landscape on the other side.

A mysticism and a white sun seemed to bathe us from that perch, watching where a continent abruptly ends and where the Atlantic Ocean reaches up to reclaim the rock it surrendered thousands of years ago. This was the edge of Inishmór, the largest of a trio of sentinel islands at the mouth of Ireland’s Galway Bay. They seem to ache with senescence and the lashing they receive from the gales of the North Atlantic, bare of everything but livestock pastures, stone walls, small houses and memories retold or forgotten.

Most tourists venturing on the ferry from Rossaveal arrive in the yellow seaside town of Kilronan, become swamped by bus tour operators or car drivers looking to make a euro. Tourism is the staple of the Aran Islands now, and off they take their customers down the road to Dún Aengus, a stone fort sitting for 2,000 years uneasily on the edge of Inishór, built by Celtic frontiersmen.

The Blue-Eyed Wonder and I considered Dún Aengus, but we had something else in mind. The folks in Kilronan speak Gaelic but enough English to understand, and we rented two bikes from a Gaelic-speaking boy who seemed to understand our intentions. As the tourist cargo of Asians, Germans, English and Americans disappeared to the west, The Blue-Eyed Wonder and I pedaled southward.

The paved road wound past ancient grass pastures where sheep grazed inside stone walls. We climbed a hill, and in the distant haze we spied Connemara, and all we could hear was the ocean breeze in the tall grass and the yellow, purple and white flowers. There were no cheap trinkets to buy that would stick to our car or to attach to our key chains, no lines to see exhibits, no on calling out to make a sale. In fact, there was nobody else.

The paved road soon turned to gravel, making a journey on a bike much more difficult. The tired slipped under the shifting rocks and braking meant skidding to what you hope would be a safet stop. Where the road turned to the left to ascend a hill, we ditched our bikes and hoofed it up the slope.

What met our eyes could not be replicated anywhere in the world or in a Tolkein novel, a place of such natural grandeur and manmade mystery. The grassy island suddenly ended in jagged, frightening and beautiful limestone cliffs falling into an aquamarine sea. To the left on a precarious peninsula, we spied the ruins of Dún Dúchathair, a fort much like Dún Aengus but lonelier, more isolated, more haunting. We walked through the broken walls and sat alone on that peninsula, listening to the ocean waves bombard Inishmór, and I imagined what it must have been like to be a Celtic warrior standing watch at night two millennia ago. I imagined the drifting constellations like a million diamond particles, and how, I wondered, did they manage the isolation and loneliness.

I’ll never know. As The Blue-Eyed Wonder and I sat wrapped around one another to stay warm from the Atlantic breeze, all I knew was this Ireland was the Ireland came to find.

I left my peace of mind at Dún Dúchathair.

Tagged as: Dun Duchathair, Galway, Inishmor, Kilronan