Snapshots: Inis Mór

Standing on the deck of the ferry, I inhaled deeply, grinning at the smell of the sea air and the feel of the sun on my face. This was not the weather I had expected to find in the West of Ireland in April, but I wasn't about to complain. Nor was I at all tempted to go inside, despite the crisp sea breeze. I'd propped myself against the outside wall of the ferry's main cabin, where I was partially shielded from the wind, and leaned back to watch the largest of Ireland's Aran Islands approach on the horizon: Inis Mór.

The coast of Inis Mór, dotted with famine walls.

As we docked, I debated my transportation options for the day: minivan tour, bike rental or hoofing it. Having taken a bus tour of The Burren, the Cliffs of Moher and Aillwee Cave the day before, I wasn't about to sign on to be cooped up in another car for hours, and renting a bike felt like an unnecessary expense on such a gorgeous spring day, so I opted to walk.

Walking along Inis Mór's main road, outside Kilronan.

The spring sunshine had apparently addled my over-planner's brain, since I didn't actually know how far it was from the dock to Dún Aonghasa, the medieval cliff fort that I'd decided would be my target destination. This was completely out of character, but I was enjoying wandering around, drinking in the scenery, too much to care. (It also didn't dawn on me to question why I hadn't seen anyone else on foot until I'd been walking for about an hour.)

I wandered past ruins...

...past thatched-roof houses...

...past some of the hundreds of miles of famine walls on the island, built during the Great Famine of the 1840s for about half a penny per worker per day...

...past beaches and numerous cows....

Eventually, I started to wonder if I should have paid a little more attention to the length of the island that was probably noted somewhere in my guidebook - or asked someone how far Dún Aonghasa was from Kilronan. Since I'd spent about an hour and a half eating lunch and then shopping for an Aran sweater, mid-afternoon was rapidly approaching and I was starting to get a little worried about making it back to the dock for the 5pm ferry - the only one before the next day.

Finally, I could see what had to be the cliff fort up ahead (although it took me a while to realize that it was too tall to be another famine wall, and that the daylight coming through a section of it was probably a door):

I picked up the pace and stopped taking photos every five feet, intent on making it to Dún Aonghasa with enough time to explore a bit before I had to hurry back to the dock. I made it to the visitor center, paid my student entry fee (a very reasonable €1; €3 for non-student adults) and started up the trail to the fort at as fast a clip as I could manage.

The winding trail between the visitor center and the fort from near the top.

As I entered the outer enclosure of the fort itself, I looked around at the rock walls and well-trodden grass, trying to picture how it would have looked as a community. It was interesting, knowing that humans had been living in this area for more than 2,500 years, but it wasn't the impressive stronghold I'd been expecting.

Looking at the space inside the middle enclosure of the fort, from near the entrance to the inner enclosure.

Then I stepped into the center of Dún Aonghasa and immediately changed my mind. The sound of the sea, subdued in the larger, more open outer and middle areas of the fort, echoed off the rocks and sent wind whipping through the half-circle of the fort's inner enclosure. I stepped to the edge and had trouble catching my breath as I sat down to marvel at the view: between the power of the ocean crashing at the base of the island below, the unscalable cliff face rushing vertically to meet it and the beauty of the sun glancing off the water as far as I could see, I was dazzled.

Looking southeast along the coast. This side of Inis Mór is ceaselessly battered by the Atlantic Ocean; Kilronan and most of the settlements cluster around and spread out from the more sheltered bay at the island's northeast corner.

Looking the other direction along Inis Mór's southern coast.

I wanted to stay, soaking up the beauty and strength of the cliff fort for hours longer, but I was already going to have to run to catch the ferry, so I reluctantly made my way back down the trail, pausing just long enough to grin at the cows lying placidly in a small pasture near the visitor center.

I headed back down the road and tried not to panic when I saw that even the minivan tours were starting to head toward the dock. I didn't have anything with me except a bottle of water, my camera, a guidebook and the sweater I'd purchased after lunch, and I really didn't want to search out a hostel room when I had a cozy one, with things like my toothbrush and clean clothes in it, that I'd already paid for back in Galway.

I passed a small café just as a tour was coming out of it to get back in their minivan and seized the opportunity. I waved at the driver and dashed across the road. I explained my predicament and asked if he had any room - at that point, I was happy to pay for a seat in any vehicle faster than my legs going in the right direction - or if he knew of any taxi or bus service on the island. His tour had one seat open, so he told me to go ahead and hop in. I thanked him profusely and did so, asking how much the tour was. He was kind enough to only charge me €5, although I'm sure the full price was at least twice that.

Thanks to the driver's willingness to pick up idiot tourists who hadn't quite paid enough attention to planning their day, I made it to the dock with time to spare and was able to sit and watch the ferry come in.

Inis Mór is a place I'd like to get back to and spend more time exploring. There are footpaths and bike-able roads all over the island, which it turns out I only covered about half of that afternoon (~7km, or ~4.3mi, as opposed to the 14km+ of the island's full length). I'd also like to go back to Dún Aonghasa when I don't have to leave in a rush. And although this lapse in over-planning and exercise in winging it was probably good for me, and I certainly enjoyed the day, I've been careful to calculate times and distances in similar situations since!

A Table for One?

There's traveling, and then there's traveling alone - they're two completely different things and each has its own strengths and weaknesses, as well as its own stresses and delights.

Traveling, whether it's with a group or just one person you know, tends to keep you in something of a bubble. Or perhaps a better way to put it is that traveling with people you know or with a group that organizes things for you keeps at least one foot in your comfort zone. You'll always have someone to talk to who speaks your language, someone who's likely to be as bemused as you are by confusing customs, someone to verify whether you're right or wrong and someone to help you stay safe. Traveling also leaves you little to no personal space and requires a lot of compromise between what you want to do and what those you're traveling with want to do.

Traveling alone doesn't let you exist in a bubble and, the first time you do it, you get shoved well beyond the boundaries of any possible comfort zone. Whatever you do, whether it's finding the right phrase in the book for buying student museum tickets instead of full-price ones, getting on the right train or finding your way to your hostel or hotel in a city you've never set foot in before, you're on your own. On one hand, you get to set your own schedule and do what you want; on the other, there's no one to decompress with or to watch your back.

I was nervous about my first solo trip, not because I was more concerned than usual for my safety (as I told my parents, Ireland is Western, English-speaking, friendly and probably safer than much of the U.S.) but because the thought of traipsing around by myself for a week, with no one for company, was a little daunting. The idea of traveling alone had never really occurred to me, and the fact that I was taking a solo trip was purely accidental: the friend who'd planned to come with me got sick at the last moment and was unable to go. I went anyway because I didn't want to forfeit either the chance to visit a country high on my list or the non-refundable tickets I'd bought to get there, but I didn't really know what I was going to do by myself for a week in a country where I knew no one.

So I was surprised to find, barely a day into my trip, that I loved it. I stood at the Cliffs of Moher, wandered the streets of Galway, hiked across Inis Mór and soaked up the sun in St. Stephen's Green, on no one's schedule but my own. I loved my hostel in Galway and hated the one in Dublin, but I got by without any major problems and the people were interesting, regardless. Suddenly, solo seemed like a great way to travel, rather than a lonely, forbidding, potentially scary event.

April 2006. At Dún Aonghasa, a prehistoric cliff fort on
Inis Mór, the largest of the Aran Islands. 

I made friends with a girl in my hostel in Galway and a guy in my hostel in Dublin. With the former, I went out for a pint at Tis Cóilí and ended up in the middle of a seisún of fabulous traditional music, casually and energetically performed by talented musicians who had dropped by and ended up jammed into the front window, sipping their own pints between songs. The bartender laughed when I asked if there might be a CD of the group's I could buy, but offered me one by a solo accordion ("box") artist, Colm Gannon, which I still listen to regularly. With the latter, I sat in the hostel's lounge and talked about Ireland vs. the U.S. in every aspect we could think of - education, sports, culture, attitude, outlook on life, etc - while a party raged on in the pub next door, for what occasion I don't remember.

The only part of the first solo trip that really made me uncomfortable after I'd settled into enjoying myself the first evening was eating alone. My hostel roommates and I were on different schedules, so I ate by myself in the common room in the morning. I was usually off rambling when lunch and dinner rolled around, so I stepped cautiously into pubs or fish 'n' chip houses and either ate standing up at the counter or asked for a table for one, feeling awkward until the moment I walked out again. Eventually, I started to relax and read or wrote while I ate, using it as time to sort through what I'd seen and done and figure out what I thought about it all, making small talk with the server if he or she seemed friendly, or sorting through the photos on my camera to delete the accidental, duplicate or just plain terrible ones. If you get a postcard or a letter from me while I'm traveling alone, it's a pretty safe bet that it was at least partially written on a table or the top of a bar.

That first solo trip was something of an experiment - a successful one. I learned that I enjoy my own company enough to travel alone, that I'm extroverted enough when pushed out of my comfort zone to make new acquaintances, that although it can be tiring I have the mental energy to stay alert and aware of my surroundings at all times without someone else there for backup, and that, despite my initial uncertainty about it, a table for one can be a relaxing, rather than an embarrassing, experience.