A woman who visits Connemara every summer decided to see what lay beyond the coast and visited islands which brought her, she writes, "into a world even more magical than the one I'd left behind". She and six others, ages ranging from three to 80. And the result is spread in print and lovely colour photographs over two pages in the Sunday edition of the New York Times, which prints something over 1.6 million copies. How many of us have looked across to these islands and wondered? In much of her efforts she was guided by Michael Gibbons, the archaeologist and general wise man of the area. The first island is only half so: Omey. You can walk over to it at low tide, with that great stretch of sand. There is St Feichin's holy well, and the medieval church, completely buried in sand until it was excavated in 1981. The poet Louis Mac Neice's father was born on Omey. "We prised limpets off the rocks and ate them raw." (Never done it: never will.) Later to Inishbofin; served now by two boats. The island is five miles long and still has remains of Cromwell's Barracks built in 1652. "The best-preserved 17th-century fortress in the country," according to Michael Gibbons. It was a penal colony for Catholic clergy, we are told, and Bishop's Rock is where a bishop was tied until the waters rose and drowned him. There is a hotel and bicycles can be hired. Plenty to be explored. St Colman left Lindisfarne in 665 over a dispute about the proper date of Easter, built a monastery here and over its ruins a 14th-century edifice is now also in ruins. Less than a mile away is Inishark, inhabited now by birds, not people. The human population of 23 was taken off in 1960 and rehoused on the mainland. Now a haven for gannets, guillemots, arctic terns, red-billed oyster-catchers and fulmars, "nesting in profusion", she writes. "There are the remains of a beehive hut, Clochan Leo, and some old stone walls covered in lichen that were actually Bronze Age hut sites."
Finally Saint Macdara's Island. On July 16th, Saint Macdara's day, our writer went on the traditional journey with many boatloads of people. The sun shone while five priests offered open-air Mass at the tiny oratory, restored in 1975. How many Connemara visitors have done these islands like the author Darlyn Brewer Hoffstot?
Footnote: Joe Rafferty is speaking at Maynooth on this Thursday at the National Landscape Forum '99: his subject is entitled "Concreting Connemara - A Landscape Under Threat". The Forum runs on Thursday and Friday.
