(Huff, Puff)

Last year, when I moved into Parker house, I lovingly brought my bike to its new home in the garage, hung it on the wall in there...and haven't ridden it since. I felt this lack of activity keenly today, my friends.

We're on Inishmore, the largest of the Aran Islands, just off the northwest coast of Ireland. There's an amazing and very old ring fort about 5 miles inland from our hotel here in the main village on the island, and our options for getting there were:

Pony cart: €100
Minibus tour: €40
Rental bike: €8

Given my current traveling partner, there wasn't really a question about what we would do. And here's what it was like out there on the road, when the more expensive modes of transport passed us by as we huffed and puffed up the steep inland route.


But it was good exercise, after all the heavy Irish breakfasts and dinners we've had the pleasure of consuming, and we also got to see sights like these:

Traditional thatched roof home - apparently now that they treat the thatch with
fire-proof material, it's coming back into style

Beautiful wildflowers in all the meadows and pastures here - there's supposed to be a wild orchid that grows here, but I've yet to spot it.

The fort itself, Dun Aengus, is kind of mysterious. They don't know when it was built, but they know it's been there since at least 200 B.C. And it used to be a circle, but over the centuries it's crumbled off the cliff. Speaking of cliffs, here is our latest series of death-defying feats at the fort:



It always seems so very un-American to come to places like this and find no guard rails, not more than one or two warning signs, no disabled access, no outrageous entrance fees. (For unlimited access and to hang out as long as we liked, we each paid €3). So we camped out for a while, resting from the ride on the soft turf, companionably reading and people watching.


It was funny to watch people approach the edge of the cliff. A large group of German tourists all took a series of group pictures. A very nervous young Aussie dashed away from the edge and encouraged his two travel partners to leave the edge themselves as soon as possible. An Italian trio won the award for loudest group of the day, with the woman calling "Guiseppe! Guiseppe!" so loudly to her husband that we could here them from wherever they were. The few parents who did bring children up to the fort certainly didn't let them get anywhere within 10 meters of the cliff. After quite a while, we headed back down to the bikes and the coastal road home.

We biked back past endless stone walls, wildflowers waving in meadows, beautiful horses with their colts, small windswept beaches, a seal colony, and a tiny hut selling sweets and drinks with a baby donkey, its mum, and a goat tied up in front. I stopped in a little shop and bought a hooded Aran sweater for Lily from a lady who'd made it and was working on another when I walked in. We've just ended our day with an excellent dinner of local sea food and sticky toffee pudding. We think we earned it after that ride. :)