August 6-9, Day 54-57. Weather had switched and it didn’t look like I’d really be able to get to Inishmore for several days comfortably, so instead I stashed my boat at the coast guard station and took the ferry across. I lived on Inishmore for about 5 months on the tail end of Covid when nothing was open, and I was recognized as someone new when I went to the single little small grocery store that there is. So it’s been a really lovely time here and I’ve been able to cycle from end to end and see all my favorite spots again. It’s really something to be able to lay down looking over or dangle my legs over cliffs 80 feet tall, a straight ruler line down into the crashing foamy sea. Sometimes there’s a cave at the bottom that when water crashes in, makes a booming and shaking sound and the water shoots out horizontally from the pressure.
It’s busier now of course, being summer and tourist season, and I don’t see as many of the older islanders around. Talking to the shop owners it sounds like Covid was quite the lovely thing for islanders here. It meant they got their island back. With no people coming here it meant you were able to meet with others at 2 in the afternoon, and have the beach to yourself. It’s just the matter of the fact of the islands being gorgeous, unique, traditional and all the rest of it, that people want to visit. And I’m guilty of this as well of course, for all of the places I’ve visited and lived in, I’m always a foreigner. It’s something to check yourself on for sure. I’m very grateful I got to live here during a time that no one was doing anything anyway. And it’s been a joy to see a lot of the same friends of mine still here. That’s what happens with small places like this, you come to visit and all of the sudden you’ve lived here for 6 years.
I’ll leave tomorrow and get my boat in Doolin and keep going. I’m half way there! What a long haul, this trip, all the way, half way around the country in my 18 foot boat. And yet a whole halfway to go. Maybe I’ll be done late September? Who knows. I don’t really think about it anymore, everything I do and the weather and sea around me just exists as it is.
