Sunburns in Ireland?!

This past weekend we visited the west coast of the island, going through County Connamera and over to Inishmore, the largets of the Aran Islands off the western coast. Our first day was visiting an island which is the site of several ancient church ruins and a holy well that was origionally of Gaelic pagan origin but was absorbed by the Catholic church by sprinkling a little holy water into it. This adoption of the local customs and rituals of the people here by the Catholic church was common here, and is one of the ways that Ireland was so easily brought into the Catholic faith. The island itself is rather interesting in that it's only really an island about half of the time. During the day the tide goes out and leaves a stretch of beach clear from the island to the mainland. There is only one permanent resident of the island, Pascal, who, our tour guide informed us, was "mad as a hatter, and the best expert on the monastic ruins in the area". We also visited the church that W.B. Yeats is buried at. The hostel we stayed in that night was really cool, and full of character. Each of the rooms was themed after a different country, and they had a sitting room where they burned peat, and a piano that I'm convinced hasn't been tuned in at least fifteen years. Duckworth would probably have loved the sound of it. The proprieters were very generous, and cooked us a full meal for dinner that night that was incredibly good. Also by the hostel was a graveyard from where an old Industrial school used to be. These industrail schools were reform schools for children who's parents had cast them out of their homes and recent investigations have been discovering more and more evidence of the horrible treatment that the children recieved at these schools. They were pretty much used as slave labor and beaten until they died, usually at very young ages (7-14). The graveyard was set up as a memorial a few years ago to the countless children who died at this particular school. After visiting the memorial, we all spent a fun evening at the local pub where they had three locals playing Irish folk music. Ian, our bus driver, came with us, and we stayed for a little while enjoying the music and atmosphere.

Saturday started out with a guided tour around the area looking at some major archeological sites nearby, including several quartz standing stones and an old tombstone that was written in both english and old gaelic. The rest of the morning and afternoon was spent hiking through a bog which was the home to a four thousand year old burial chamber, which has since appeard through errosion of the hill that origionally housed it, and the ruins of a village that was abandoned during the Famine early in the 20th century. For the evening we stayed in Galway city, the tourist trap of the coast. As fishing is the second largest industry in Galway after tourism, we decided that dinner at a seafood resturant was in order, and were not disapointed.

Our last day we took a ferry over to Inishmore. The weather was beyond beautiful, and most of us came away from the weekend with sunburns (who would have thought I would get sunburned in Ireland?!). We rented bikes and traversed the sixteen square-mile island looking at the ruins and beaches they had there. The largest of the ruins was Dun Anghusa, a three-walled fort that had it's back right along the edge of the cliff. It was an impressive site to behold, perched right at the cliff edge hundreds of feet above the water. They don't have any fencing or anything there either, so you can go right to the edge of the cliff and look down. I wonder what kind of insurance they have for clumsy tourists. We also biked up to the lighthouse tower, which gave an amazing panorama of the island and over to the Black Fort, another multi-thousand year old fort ruin. What puzzled me most about the island was that it was completely covered in low stone walls. There wasn't so much as an acre of land that wasn't walled off. Considering that the native inhabitants of the island only occupy one small town near the middle and the pier at the coast, none of us could fathom what the purpose for all of the walls was. We finished the day by relaxing back on the porch outside our hostel, talking and watching the harbor. It was an amazing weekend that we all agreed will be one of the high points of our time here in Ireland.