Inishmore Aran Islands
Inishmore, or Inis Mór in Irish, is the largest of the three Aran Islands lying across the mouth of Galway Bay off the west coast of Ireland, and it is one of the most remarkable landscapes in Europe. The island covers approximately 31 square kilometres and is built almost entirely from bare Carboniferous limestone, a landscape of extraordinary austerity and beauty where stone walls run in every direction across flat grey pavements, dividing tiny fields created over centuries by generations of islanders who carried seaweed and sand up from the shore to build soil where none existed. The island's most famous landmark is Dún Aonghasa, a prehistoric cliff-top fort perched on the edge of a sheer drop of nearly 100 metres above the Atlantic. The fort's massive semicircular walls and the band of jagged upright stones, known as a chevaux de frise, designed to impede attacking forces, date back around three thousand years and represent one of the finest examples of prehistoric fortification in Europe. Standing at the cliff edge inside Dún Aonghasa looking out over the open Atlantic is one of those experiences that stays with you: there is simply nothing between you and America. The island's human culture is equally compelling. Irish is the first language of most Inishmore residents and the island preserves a Gaeltacht community of genuine vitality. Traditional life here was shaped entirely by the sea and the stone, and the knowledge of currach building, fishing, farming and storytelling that evolved over millennia in isolation has produced a cultural landscape recognised as exceptional. J.M. Synge visited the islands in the 1890s on the advice of W.B. Yeats and drew deeply on what he found here for plays including The Playboy of the Western World and Riders to the Sea. Other prehistoric and early Christian sites are scattered across the island. Dún Eochla and Dún Eoghanachta are further hilltop forts, while the early Christian church site of Teampall Bheanáin, one of the smallest chapels in the world, clings to a hillside with improbable determination. The natural landscape includes rare limestone pavement habitats supporting plant communities found almost nowhere else in Ireland, including mountain avens and other species more typically associated with Arctic or Alpine environments. Visitors reach Inishmore by ferry from Rossaveal near Galway or from Doolin in County Clare, or by small aircraft from Connemara Airport. On the island, bicycles and the local minibus service provide the main means of getting around. The pace of life here is genuinely unhurried, and giving yourself two days rather than one will allow a much more satisfying experience of this remarkable place.