We missed out on the Aran Islands hat-trick with a soggy Inis Meáin

Isee the Aran Islands have been placed sixth in a list of the world’s best islands. To be honest, I’m not even sure they’re my sixth favourite islands in Ireland. But maybe it’s just too soon: it’s still all a bit raw. To be fair, I have no issue with two of the three islands that make up the string of Aran. Possibly because of landlubber parents and then later a husband born without sea legs, I came quite late to the islands, only steaming out of Rosaveel — after a great deal of begging and bribing on my part — for the first time a decade ago. On that storied occasion, we landed on Inis Mór, where the discovery that my family had radically differing cycling abilities made for a fairly fraught day trip. Essentially, The Boy and I took off into the wind, finishing up at the top of Dún Aengus where we drank in the spectacular views of The Youngest crying as she struggled with a bike that was too big for her and, way behind her, The Small Girl and her father shouting angrily at each other as she appeared to have completely lost the ability to ride a bike.

My other takeaways from that day were that we ate some really lovely seafood and the island folk did that infuriating thing that people in the mainland Gaeltacht do of answering questions asked in Irish in English.

At least on Inis Oírr last year, the smallest and loveliest island, The Youngest and I spoke more Irish than we had for years — with each other and with strangers — as we passed a very pleasant day walking its quiet boreens, visiting the Plassey wreck, laughing at the opportunistic Father Ted marketing and stretching out in the sunshine on a beach with sand so soft and white we might have been in the Caribbean.

So when we were back in Connemara a couple of weeks ago, the hat trick of Inis Meáin seemed like a no brainer. There were five of us on board: The Boy, The Youngest, The Cousin, The Cousin’s Baby and myself, the instigator, and in many ways, the Skipper of Our Dreams. Later on, The Boy will claim that as we get off the boat, one of the crew says to him with some concern, ‘you do know this is Inis Meáin, don’t you?’ — but I don’t know anything about that as we embark on our latest magical mystery tour of this last Aran Island.

The first thing you need to know about Inis Meáin is that it’s about an hour from Inis Meáin. We leave the harbour and look for a village, a shop, something to suggest there is some sort of human settlement here, but the buildings are a long, long uphill way off, and we have a pram and a baby. Still, we set off and eventually we find the shop and, inside, a proprietor who converses in Irish — so points earned there — but in answer to our queries, informs us that his is the only establishment selling food and drink on the island. He doesn’t do sandwiches or any of that fancy dan stuff, but we buy tea and crisps and biscuits and follow his directions to the beach. We unroll our towels and agree that it doesn’t look safe to swim there. Then the heavens empty down on us — quickly, efficiently — so we roll our soaking towels back up and wonder what else there is to do on Inis Meáin.

We are vaguely wandering back when we suddenly stumble across a pub. A lovely pub, where they only sold out of toasted sandwiches an hour previously. We get pints and the sun comes back out and we sit in the courtyard wondering if there is beef between the shop keeper and the publican — and out of nowhere, a colleague of mine from a lifetime ago appears and when I tell her we’re not having the greatest time of it, she thanks the stars because the fewer tourists who come to her beloved island hideaway, the better.

Then she and her lovely, grown-up, bohemian friends head down to the pier to swim and in truth, now I could stay here for days.

But the distraught faces of my travelling companions convince me I am alone in my island reverie. On the ferry back to the mainland we bowdlerize a poem originally penned for Kinnegad. With apologies to the good people of the island, it’s not me, it’s them: ‘I’ve heard that Naas is a terrible place, and I cannot stand Japan. But of all the places in all the world, f*** me, Inis Meáin.’