Inis Meáin: The forgotten island

I tagged along with classmates on a reporting trip to Inis Meáin, the quiet middle child of the Aran Islands. They were bound for interviews; I was there out of curiosity. And, if I’m honest, scepticism. Why Inis Meáin?

Raised in east Galway, I’d made the pilgrimage west more than once, but always to Inis Mór or Inis Oírr. In school, an Irish teacher of mine had dismissed Inis Meáin as dull. “Nothing on it,” he’d said. The verdict stuck. I never went.

We left from Ros a Mhíl on a bright morning, the boat skimming out into Galway Bay to a soundtrack of chatter and bravado. It didn’t last. Once the swell caught us, conversation gave way to silence and a collective shade of green. Fifty minutes later we docked. We were the only passengers to disembark, which gained us a few strange looks from the crew and our fellow passengers. The ferry pushed on towards Inis Oírr, heavy with day-trippers, while we stepped onto a pier that felt like the edge of the map.

A woman named Angela, who was waiting for her groceries, offered a lift into the village. When she clocked there were five of us, she said she’d get “himself” to come down as well. We thanked her kindly but chose the half-hour walk instead, it was a chance to find our sea legs and take in the stone-walled fields that stitch the island together.

Our first port of call was the community centre: Irish classes advertised on the noticeboard, public loos inside, and a curious scatter of outdoor gym equipment facing the Atlantic. From there we wandered towards the village, which consisted of a tight cluster of a church, a shop, a pub, and, incongruously, a very friendly donkey. We lit a candle in the church, bought snacks in the shop, and ate them on a bench outside. My apple found its way to the donkey, who accepted it with more enthusiasm than any of us managed for our limp sandwiches from home.

We had notions of a pint, but the pub doors were locked until four. Our ferry was due at 16:40. Timing, as ever, was against us. Back at the community centre we tried the exercise machines, wind resistance training, Aran-style, before asking inside what there was to do on the island. “Have you been to the shop?” came the reply, deadpan.

A rainstorm blew in from nowhere and we sheltered against the eastern wall of a long-derelict hotel, now slated for redevelopment as an arts centre. Rain hammered the stone while we debated our top ten Irish figures, a conversation as meandering as the island’s roads.

When the sky cleared, we made for Dún Conchúir, the ancient stone fort that crowns the island’s highest point. From there, the Atlantic stretched vast and indifferent, cliffs dropping to white spray below. The view was reason enough to come. For a moment we swore we could see the discoloured copper of Lady Liberty in the distance.

Inis Meáin is smaller and quieter than Inis Mór or Inis Oírr, and it makes little effort to compete. There are no sprawling visitor centres, no queues of bikes wobbling off the pier. What it offers instead is space to walk, to talk, to let the weather have the final say.

By the time we boarded the return ferry, cheeks stung by salt and wind, the question that had followed me out of Ros a Mhíl felt settled. Inis Meáin may be the overlooked sibling, but it is not empty. It is simply unhurried, and all the better for it.