Discover Aran Islands (Inis Mór)

The big island of the Aran group, and the one everyone means when they say 'Aran'

Inis Mór sits about 14 km long and under 4 km wide, a slab of Burren-like limestone pavement out in the mouth of Galway Bay, its highest point barely 123 metres above the sea. It is a Gaeltacht island, meaning Irish is the everyday language of the community, and locals and official signage use the Irish forms first: Árainn for the island, Cill Rónáin for the harbour village that visitors know as Kilronan. Everything on Inis Mór starts at that harbour, because it is the only real settlement and the point every ferry, bike hire desk and minibus tour departs from.

What draws people out here is Dún Aonghasa, the cliff fort above Cill Mhuirbhigh that has stood in some form since around 1100 BC, but the island rewards a full day rather than a fort-and-back. A coast road strung with over a thousand kilometres of dry-stone field walls runs west past the quieter Dún Dúchathair (the Black Fort), the Seven Churches at Eoghanacht, and Poll na bPéist, a naturally rectangular tidal pool cut into the rock shelf that has hosted Red Bull's cliff-diving series. Most visitors see it by rented bicycle or on a pony-and-trap, since the island carries almost no traffic of its own.