Inis Oirr (Inisheer in English) is a charming island. Meaning that the smallest of the Irish Aran islands, and the closest to the Cliffs of Moher on which it provides a spectacular point of view, casts a spell on some visitors, and surely it did on the on the one writing here.
I disembarked from the ferry, after half an hour crossing from Doolin, and I felt I arrived home, I immediately felt that I belonged. And I felt that the island belonged to me. How else can you explain the fact that just hours from stepping on the pier I regarded the one-day tourists as a nuisance and cherished the moment when I saw the last ferry departing: then the island was all to ourselves.
Those were the moments I enjoyed it the most, after dinner, when the sun was about to go down on Inis Meain and you could almost touch the peace in the air. On the first evening, with a deep blue moonlit sky, after a short but heavy rain, I discovered a small, secluded, beach, which immediately became “my beach”. And I spent a lovely time there, just thinking and listening to the soothing sound of the ocean.
And on the island everybody says hello when you pass by, everybody stops whatever they are doing if you look like asking something, so to answer, and everybody makes some conversation, in shops, pubs, bars, on the road, wherever. And there’s always a cup of tea and a scone. During the afternoon. In the evening it’s a pint of Guinness you drink together with the regulars in one of the two pubs on the island, where you don’t feel lonely even if you are alone. It’s a contagious friendliness the one you breathe on the island.
And then, when you see somebody more than a couple of times, then you are best friends and start talking about everything, from the weather to the ocean, from politics to gossip, from your life to my life.
Inis Oirr is an Island to taste and savour and enjoy slowly and on your own.
You can rent a bicycle but the small dirt roads are always up and down and riding can be strenuous, and, most of all, with a bike you cannot follow the big red dots, and it would be a crying shame not to.
When you arrive in front of the ocean, the tracks and the fields finish and the rocks begin.
And on the rocks there are the big red dots, which you follow and feel confident, with a purpose and a path, an explorer bound to discover a brand new world, for you, but an ancient and timeless one for itself, full of beauty and peace.
I walked almost every path on this small Island, which is bigger than you expect and imagine, and richer and more varied, and I looked at the ocean and took it in, and breathed its energy and force, so to draw on it once back to my real home.
Inis Oirr is made for walking, along the roads and the tracks lined by hundreds of dry stone walls dividing small fields where peaceful cows, some horses and a few sheep graze, tracks that wind through an ever changing landscape where it is so easy to feel lost, but you just need to look around and find some familiar landmark: the lighthouse, the ship-wreck, the cliffs on mainland, the long coast exposed to the ocean, the secluded beach, the reassuring profile of Inis Meain looking west towards open ocean, and therefore find back your place on the Island, and in the world and within yourself.
It’s a meditation Island, Inis oirr.
This is an Island of sea and granite, of blue and gray, of some wild flowers and no trees. An island with short and intense showers, and long sunny days, surrounded by the ocean that seems so peaceful and mild when you stare at it perched on the rocks, but which can be not so tranquil when you cross it on the ferry to Rossaveal.
Or maybe it’s the island that doesn’t want you to leave, that doesn’t want to break the spell.
Maybe the island wanted to keep me there. And I wanted to stay.
