Aran Islands Walks

Inis Oirr, Aran Islands, Ireland

Years ago when I lived on the smallest of the Aran Islands, Inis Oirr, I used to go for long walks around the island nearly every day. I nearly always walked alone (except for an occasional restless canine partner) and so had no one to interpret the strange island landscape for me. Over the years I learned tidbits of information about the island’s geology, flora and fauna, archaeology and such that I gathered from the islanders, from books and articles, from my own guesswork and estimation. But it was a crazy quilt history of the island I ended up with, just like the basic, broken, patchwork Irish I picked up over the years (or Frankenstein Irish I’d call it with honesty, horror-show Gaeilge).

One of my usual walking partners.

Meanwhile I always wondered why Inis Oirr never had someone available who could take a visitor around and tell the true, full story of the island. There were pony and trap tours and wagon tours and even van and car tours of the island, but…Inis Oirr isn’t really that big of a place. It’s a place of all kinds of stone nooks and rock crannies and narrow, half-hidden boreens. A place that better reveals its stories and secrets to those who seek them out at a walker’s pace, a rambler’s tempo rather than any driver’s rush.

I was happy to hear that this year a new tour business was launched on Inis Oirr—a walking tour company called Aran Islands Walks. Finally—someone who can show off the island the way it’s meant to be shown off, on foot.

Eoghan Poil of Aran Islands Walk, in the Inis Oirr cemetery.

Aran Islands Walks was started up this spring by Eoghan Poil, a native Inis Oirr man who’s only lived off the island during his college years. He lives full-time on Inis Oirr now, serves as a manager for one of the Aran Islands’ football teams, and just married (only a few weeks ago) a woman from neighboring Inis Mor. “I didn’t go far,” he says and smiles, when I ask about his new bride, who has also partnered with him in getting Aran Islands Walks off the ground this summer. So far they seem to be off a good start, with a website and Facebook and Twitter accounts already set up and strong support from other island businesses. Indeed when I ask another recent Inis Oirr entrepreneur, Brid Ni Chualain, who’s recently begun teaching summer adult Irish-language courses, about Eoghan’s new business, she confirms that a number of her students this summer took tours with Aran Islands Walks and reported the walk as a highlight of their week on the
 island.

A week ago while visiting the island, I met up with Eoghan and took a walking tour with him. There are many positive things I can say about Eoghan’s tours, and the best is that even after working on and visiting Inis Oirr over a span of 15 years, I still learned so much about the island that I never knew before.

The Plassey, a ship wrecked on the island in 1960

Grave of the island's patron saint, St. Caomhan.

English signal tower (foreground) and the first school on the island (background).

Interior room of O'Brien's Castle on Inis Oirr

Little stone face on exterior of castle wall

Aran Islands Walks offers three levels of walks based upon how much time visitors have and their walking ability: a 1 ¼ hour walk, a 1 ¾ walk, and a 2 ½ hour walk, the last of which takes in 14 historical/archaeological sites. The 14 sites include the island’s cemetery and patron saint’s church, which has sunken below the earth (or as Eoghan corrects me, was actually built on level sandy ground that blew up over time and buried the church), a shipwreck ruin that “landed” on Inis Oirr in 1960, a castle, an English signal tower, the island’s first school (a building I’d passed probably 100 times but never noticed—maybe for good reason, as Eoghan told me the island’s landlords only agreed to its establishment if it were built in an inconvenient location, thereby discouraging islander education), and a 10th-century church dedicated to St. Gobnait. Along the way you’ll also learn about the islanders’ field and stonework.

St. Caomhan's church in the island cemetery

O'Brien's Castle

Eoghan at the Plassey

Find out how a field like this...

...Gets cleared to look like this.

Side by side view of the two field extremes on Arainn

And this isn’t even including the “extras”—like the views of the Cliffs of Moher in Clare or the Twelve Pins in Connemara that you can see on a fine day from Inis Oirr, the walk from the pier past the island’s beautiful beach, the exercise in the fresh island air. And since I’m a women’s tour operator and take especial interest in women’s history, Eoghan made sure to tailor the tour to my interests, including the history of Cill na Seacht nInion, the Church of the Seven Daughters, a ruins in a hard-to-find field near the back of the island.

View of the island lake, the Plassey, and Cliffs of Moher beyond.

Eoghan at Cill Gobnait, dedicated to a female saint.

Remains of a clochan (beehive hut) at Cill Gobnait.

After the tour, I was glad to have met Eoghan and glad to have taken a walk with him. And glad he’s started Aran Islands Walks. Inis Oirr is a fascinating place—it’s captivated me for 16 years, if that’s any proof of its hold on the traveler’s soul and senses. A thorough, professional walking tour of the island for visitors was long overdue. Now it’s here for anyone up for a good stroll. 

After the tour with Eoghan I return to my old walking partner, to share all my news about the island. He was so curious to hear it all.