It's a day off the bike and it's going to be a glorious day in County Clare. We walked 20 minutes to the pier to catch the ferry to Inisheer. Yesterday we decided to visit the smallest of the Aran Islands instead of going to the biggest and most popular Inishmoor Island. It's a long weekend and the crowds are arriving. We've been told by several locals that Inisheer will be quieter and that we will get a better feel for the island village life. Also, due to expected crowds bikes weren't allowed on the ferries . . . but you could rent them on the island if you wanted.
We're slowly arriving at Inisheer. The ferry ride was supposed to be 15 minutes, but it left 20 minutes early and arrived on time . . . it was a slow crossing that took 35 minutes. But it's a stellar blue sky day.
susan maaschwe stayed on inishmoor, in kilronan. the island was fun to ride around, and we visited the dun aengus fort. Reply to this comment 3 months ago
We popped into the bike rental place to get a map of the island, and were quite intrigued with the bike parking system. No, we didn't rent bikes . . . we wanted to walk today.
We had been advised to go to the right of the pier as the tourists (there were 150 on ferry) would go to the left. Right we went and we didn't see anyone else for the first half hour. Then during the next half hour we saw 2 couples. Good advice!
Looks like we have found more of the limestone pavements (as the Irish call it) which is called limestone shelves in yesterday's post.
More of this different style of fencing. Chuck wanted to take the class being offered on how to stack dry stones and make a wall. Let me tell you this island is COVERED in dry stone walls!
Our route was a loop and we were headed back towards the village and we were beginning to see more people. But again, it wasn't crowded and we didn't feel like too many tourists were milling about with us.
We came across the 11th century church. To us it looked more like a chapel rather than a church. It was very small.
We had about an hour or so left to explore, so we headed up to the castle and signal tower. It was a bit of a climb up to the highest point on the island, but the views were very nice.
That's the pier way down there with ferries docked. Ferries come from Doolin and Galway bringing hordes of tourists to boost the island economy.
Part Two of our adventure began with taking the ferry back to Doolin. Our route took us to the Cliffs of Moher and gave us a guided tour of the cliffs. Just a couple of days ago we were on top looking down and now we are at the base looking up. They are pretty magnificent. The tour operator said it was the second biggest tourist attraction in Ireland with over 1.5 million visitors per year. The biggest tourist attraction? The Guinness Storehouse in Dublin.
This ferry ride was a lot of fun and we're glad we added it to our day. However, once back on the big island we moved on to Part Three of our Rest Day. On our walk from the pier back into Doolin, we passed the Pitch & Putt Golf Course. We stopped in and rented the clubs and played 18 holes. It was a hoot!!!
We added a 3.5 kilometer walk to our day off the bike to have dinner at a recommended local pub . After a day of 27,000 steps, we returned to our B&B to settle in for the night. Tomorrow is a long ride and if Ride with GPS is right there's a short STEEP climb.
3 months ago