In search of Father Ted There's more to the Aran Islands than a certain television priest, discovers Jeremy Seal Weekend Australian, 30/11/2007
A rusting hulk rose from the shore of Inis Oirr, smallest of the fabled Aran Islands off the west coast of Ireland. Narrow lanes led between tiny fields enclosed by dry-stone walls – signature landscape of all three islands – to the seaweed-strewn shelf of tide-washed limestone where the Russian freighter lay. In this lonely place, the Plassy should have rotted away unvisited except by the odd wreck buff and the local seals. Instead, the Plassy has enjoyed a remarkable afterlife, and so played a significant part in reminding the wider world of the existence of this remarkable mini-archipelago, by appearing in the opening credits of the much-loved TV series Father Ted.
That brief aerial shot has made the wreck recognisable to millions of Ted fans across the world, and even inspired the occasional pilgrimage here. It has also suggested the Arans – two, at least, of them – as candidates for the original Craggy Island, windswept fictional home of Father Ted’s endearingly disfunctional ecclesiasticals.
Tourism is rarely slow to follow television’s lead, especially when the show in question is quite as successful as Father Ted. Cue the inaugural Tedfest, which was held this February on the main island of Inis Mor, with crowds of Ted fans in cassocks and wimples converging on Inis Mor’s port ‘capital’ Kilronan for a jamboree of Ted-style mayhem. The programme included show derivatives including a Father Jack Cocktail Evening, a Priests’ and Nuns’ Five-a-Side Football Competition and Ludo Aerobics. Arrangements for next year’s festival, which will mark the 10th anniversary of the untimely death of Dermot Morgan, the actor who played Father Ted, are already well in hand. It can only be a matter of time before Ted merchandising takes its place alongside the shamrock-covered tea towels and the leprechaun figurines in Inis Mor’s new tourist office. The islands might even be tempted to adopt the catchphrase advice of Ted’s housekeeper, Mrs Doyle – ‘Go on, go on, go on, go on, go on…’ – as encouragement to anybody contemplating a visit.
The truth is the Father Ted business may serve rather better as a reminder of everything else these other-worldly islands have to offer. Certainly, there are better times to visit the Arans than February, deep in the Irish winter – and better reasons for doing so, blasphemous though it may seem, than to commemorate the late, great Ted. These desolately beautiful, almost treeless bastions of Irish revivalism and Celtic lore, with an other-worldly limestone geology and a remarkable wealth of Neolithic, pre-Christian and early monastic ruins were drawing visitors long before Ted was even a twinkle in his creator’s eye. Rather than heed Mrs Doyle, then, visitors might learn more from the poet W B Yeats who urged the playwright J M Synge to ‘go to the Aran Islands, and find a life there that has never been expressed in literature’.
Synge, as I soon discovered on visiting the remote ‘middle’ island of Inis Meain (pop. 200), did just that. I flew in a twin-prop – three passengers, seven minutes - from the mainland airport at Inverin, Connemara. The flight put down just above the beach where a small group of islanders were awaiting the plane by the terminal building, a hut pinned with mostly Irish-language procedural directives. A rare notice in English insisted ‘all packages must be singed for’, but there was no singing, or signing, as the islanders rummaged in the aircraft’s hold for the plumbing materials, food, clothing and bedding they had ordered from the mainland.
I set off up the lane towards the village, among a patchwork of patio-sized pastures and potato patches enclosed by dry-stone walls. On these tiny islands – even Inis Mor barely measures ten miles by two – there are reckoned to be thousands of miles of these distinctively patterned windbreaks which were created to coax soils from these broken limestone pavements. As historical testaments to the hardship entailed in eking a living here, they impressed me more deeply than monumental barricades like Hadrian’s Wall or even the Great Wall of China.
But back to Synge who had visited Inis Meain, a stronghold of Irish culture and language, on several occasions around 1900. He stayed at Teach Synge, the ryegrass-thatched cottage in the middle of the village where so many scholars and linguists were hosted that it soon became known as ‘The University of Irish’. Elemental Inis Meain seduced Synge. Many of his plays, most notably The Playboy of the Western World, drew their inspiration from his time here. The only problem about the cottage, restored by the islanders in 1999, was getting in. For while this shrine to Irish revivalist culture would surely have inspired a full-on heritage centre on the mainland, here there was merely a keyholder who had gone missing. I asked around for Kieran. Teresa, my landlady at the charming An Dun B&B – wholesome evening meals on request but no soap in the bathroom - had surely seen him disappearing on his bicycle. Another person thought he might have been in the post office, or perhaps out digging his potato patch. Kieran, eventually located, let me into a simply restored interior furnished with Synge memorabilia and with traditional island details like lofts for drying peat fuel and fishing equipment. What trumped the visit was discovering an unbroken lineage in the form of shy Kieran who, far from being a custodian of some heritage department, turned out to be the great grandson of Synge’s hosts during his legendary stays here.
Inis Meain, barely six kilometres by three, entranced me all day. I took in the island’s two dry-stone cashels (forts), visited saints’ shrines and ruined graveyards. Beyond Synge’s Chair, the limestone shelter where the playwright had contemplated the sunsets over Inis Mor, I walked the great sea-swept terraces which were backed by storm beaches littered with car-sized boulders. And as night fell, I made my way by moonlight – the island barely has a street light – to the island’s pub where a peat fire burned in the cosy interior. I sat at the bar, listening in on a discussion which ranged from the new harbour - and how too much Guinness had led hard hats from this major construction project to end up on the heads of scarecrows guarding some of the potato patches – to dark mutterings about the neighbouring islands’ much-publicised claims to being Craggy Island.
I took the ferry the following day to put ashore amid the comparative bustle of Inis Mor, with its gift shops, bike hire companies, knit-wear shops and cafes. The mini-bus service dropped me half-way along the island at the shoreline village of Kilmurvey where Maura and Joe Wolff run the kitchen and kitchen garden respectively at the Man of Aran Cottage. Neither fine cuisine nor local produce have been strong Aran suits, though my experience at this award-winning B&B confounded all expectations. Maura’s excellent chicken in fresh tarragon was complimented by a salad of Jo’s garden-grown leaves which included rocket and nasturtiums, basil, chives and spinach. ‘When Joe started on his garden,’ said Maura, ‘they all laughed at him in the pub.’ Now, by using polytunnels and hydroponics, he has created an example being eagerly followed elsewhere on the island.
The B&B also has a close association with Aran lore. The traditional thatched cottage was built for the interior shots of Robert Flaherty’s 1930s Man of Aran. The filmhas long stood as the classic, if factually questionable, evocation of the islands’ story, with its heroic shots of currachs (tar-covered canvas long boats) bobbing on widow-making seas and families labouring in the stony fields. The cottage proved an atmospheric setting for an after-dinner screening of the film.
Its images still haunted me as I set out to explore the island’s cliff-bound south coast the following morning. I left my hire bike where the track gave out and followed the shoreline to one of the island’s most striking natural marvels; the Worm Hole. Here, a perfect rectangle of rock had somehow been removed from the huge limestone terrace above the shore. With its sheer sides, it resembled a large swimming pool, the water within it rising and falling with the swell of the ocean which reached it by some subterranean passage.
Further on, past the high cliffs of Blind Sound, I came to Aran’s greatest man-made edifice. The dry-stone fort of Dun Aengus was built some 2,000 years ago, its concentric semi-circular ramparts running right to the edge of sheer 100-metre sea cliffs. A handful of visitors sat among the ruins in perfect silence, which seemed like the only response to this soul-stirring place.
The ferry I caught to Inis Oirr that afternoon trailed a pod of dolphins in its wake. They veered away as the ferry swung into port where upturned currachs lay upon the beach. I set out through the village where islanders were repairing the thatched roofs of their cottages. A sign in an empty field offered ‘Donkeys For Sale’ and close to the shore lobster pots rose in abandoned stacks. A farmer driving a trailer load of potatoes homewards slowed to pass me.
‘Heading for the wreck?’ he asked. He looked pleased when I told him it wasn’t Father Ted but the islands themselves that had brought me here.
FACT FILE:
Getting to the Aran Islands:
Aer Arann (00 353 81 8210210, www.aerarann.co.uk) flies to Galway from 6 UK airports from £28 one way. Aer Arann flights to the Aran Islands (00 353 91 593034) from Inverin, Connemara cost 23 euros one way.
Ferries also serve the islands: Island Ferries (00 353 91 568093, www.aranislandferries.com); Aran Direct (00 353 91 566535, www.arandirect.com); Doolin Ferries (00 353 65 7074455, www.doolinferries.com). Return tickets 25 euros.
Accommodation:
An Dun, Inis Meain (00 353 99 73047, B&B 55 euros. Dinner 25 euros)
Man of Aran Cottage, Inis Mor (00 353 99 61301, www.manofarancottage.com, from 37 euros B&B, dinner 35 euros)
Radharc an Chlair, Inis Oirr (00 353 99 75019, B&B 40 euros)
Further information:
www.aranislands.ie
www.aran-islands.com
It's worth saying I have had incredible luck with the weather on my several trips to the Aran Islands. It's perhaps for that that the islands have always felt like the final magical place.
That brief aerial shot has made the wreck recognisable to millions of Ted fans across the world, and even inspired the occasional pilgrimage here. It has also suggested the Arans – two, at least, of them – as candidates for the original Craggy Island, windswept fictional home of Father Ted’s endearingly disfunctional ecclesiasticals.
Tourism is rarely slow to follow television’s lead, especially when the show in question is quite as successful as Father Ted. Cue the inaugural Tedfest, which was held this February on the main island of Inis Mor, with crowds of Ted fans in cassocks and wimples converging on Inis Mor’s port ‘capital’ Kilronan for a jamboree of Ted-style mayhem. The programme included show derivatives including a Father Jack Cocktail Evening, a Priests’ and Nuns’ Five-a-Side Football Competition and Ludo Aerobics. Arrangements for next year’s festival, which will mark the 10th anniversary of the untimely death of Dermot Morgan, the actor who played Father Ted, are already well in hand. It can only be a matter of time before Ted merchandising takes its place alongside the shamrock-covered tea towels and the leprechaun figurines in Inis Mor’s new tourist office. The islands might even be tempted to adopt the catchphrase advice of Ted’s housekeeper, Mrs Doyle – ‘Go on, go on, go on, go on, go on…’ – as encouragement to anybody contemplating a visit.
The truth is the Father Ted business may serve rather better as a reminder of everything else these other-worldly islands have to offer. Certainly, there are better times to visit the Arans than February, deep in the Irish winter – and better reasons for doing so, blasphemous though it may seem, than to commemorate the late, great Ted. These desolately beautiful, almost treeless bastions of Irish revivalism and Celtic lore, with an other-worldly limestone geology and a remarkable wealth of Neolithic, pre-Christian and early monastic ruins were drawing visitors long before Ted was even a twinkle in his creator’s eye. Rather than heed Mrs Doyle, then, visitors might learn more from the poet W B Yeats who urged the playwright J M Synge to ‘go to the Aran Islands, and find a life there that has never been expressed in literature’.
Synge, as I soon discovered on visiting the remote ‘middle’ island of Inis Meain (pop. 200), did just that. I flew in a twin-prop – three passengers, seven minutes - from the mainland airport at Inverin, Connemara. The flight put down just above the beach where a small group of islanders were awaiting the plane by the terminal building, a hut pinned with mostly Irish-language procedural directives. A rare notice in English insisted ‘all packages must be singed for’, but there was no singing, or signing, as the islanders rummaged in the aircraft’s hold for the plumbing materials, food, clothing and bedding they had ordered from the mainland.
I set off up the lane towards the village, among a patchwork of patio-sized pastures and potato patches enclosed by dry-stone walls. On these tiny islands – even Inis Mor barely measures ten miles by two – there are reckoned to be thousands of miles of these distinctively patterned windbreaks which were created to coax soils from these broken limestone pavements. As historical testaments to the hardship entailed in eking a living here, they impressed me more deeply than monumental barricades like Hadrian’s Wall or even the Great Wall of China.
But back to Synge who had visited Inis Meain, a stronghold of Irish culture and language, on several occasions around 1900. He stayed at Teach Synge, the ryegrass-thatched cottage in the middle of the village where so many scholars and linguists were hosted that it soon became known as ‘The University of Irish’. Elemental Inis Meain seduced Synge. Many of his plays, most notably The Playboy of the Western World, drew their inspiration from his time here. The only problem about the cottage, restored by the islanders in 1999, was getting in. For while this shrine to Irish revivalist culture would surely have inspired a full-on heritage centre on the mainland, here there was merely a keyholder who had gone missing. I asked around for Kieran. Teresa, my landlady at the charming An Dun B&B – wholesome evening meals on request but no soap in the bathroom - had surely seen him disappearing on his bicycle. Another person thought he might have been in the post office, or perhaps out digging his potato patch. Kieran, eventually located, let me into a simply restored interior furnished with Synge memorabilia and with traditional island details like lofts for drying peat fuel and fishing equipment. What trumped the visit was discovering an unbroken lineage in the form of shy Kieran who, far from being a custodian of some heritage department, turned out to be the great grandson of Synge’s hosts during his legendary stays here.
Inis Meain, barely six kilometres by three, entranced me all day. I took in the island’s two dry-stone cashels (forts), visited saints’ shrines and ruined graveyards. Beyond Synge’s Chair, the limestone shelter where the playwright had contemplated the sunsets over Inis Mor, I walked the great sea-swept terraces which were backed by storm beaches littered with car-sized boulders. And as night fell, I made my way by moonlight – the island barely has a street light – to the island’s pub where a peat fire burned in the cosy interior. I sat at the bar, listening in on a discussion which ranged from the new harbour - and how too much Guinness had led hard hats from this major construction project to end up on the heads of scarecrows guarding some of the potato patches – to dark mutterings about the neighbouring islands’ much-publicised claims to being Craggy Island.
I took the ferry the following day to put ashore amid the comparative bustle of Inis Mor, with its gift shops, bike hire companies, knit-wear shops and cafes. The mini-bus service dropped me half-way along the island at the shoreline village of Kilmurvey where Maura and Joe Wolff run the kitchen and kitchen garden respectively at the Man of Aran Cottage. Neither fine cuisine nor local produce have been strong Aran suits, though my experience at this award-winning B&B confounded all expectations. Maura’s excellent chicken in fresh tarragon was complimented by a salad of Jo’s garden-grown leaves which included rocket and nasturtiums, basil, chives and spinach. ‘When Joe started on his garden,’ said Maura, ‘they all laughed at him in the pub.’ Now, by using polytunnels and hydroponics, he has created an example being eagerly followed elsewhere on the island.
The B&B also has a close association with Aran lore. The traditional thatched cottage was built for the interior shots of Robert Flaherty’s 1930s Man of Aran. The filmhas long stood as the classic, if factually questionable, evocation of the islands’ story, with its heroic shots of currachs (tar-covered canvas long boats) bobbing on widow-making seas and families labouring in the stony fields. The cottage proved an atmospheric setting for an after-dinner screening of the film.
Its images still haunted me as I set out to explore the island’s cliff-bound south coast the following morning. I left my hire bike where the track gave out and followed the shoreline to one of the island’s most striking natural marvels; the Worm Hole. Here, a perfect rectangle of rock had somehow been removed from the huge limestone terrace above the shore. With its sheer sides, it resembled a large swimming pool, the water within it rising and falling with the swell of the ocean which reached it by some subterranean passage.
Further on, past the high cliffs of Blind Sound, I came to Aran’s greatest man-made edifice. The dry-stone fort of Dun Aengus was built some 2,000 years ago, its concentric semi-circular ramparts running right to the edge of sheer 100-metre sea cliffs. A handful of visitors sat among the ruins in perfect silence, which seemed like the only response to this soul-stirring place.
The ferry I caught to Inis Oirr that afternoon trailed a pod of dolphins in its wake. They veered away as the ferry swung into port where upturned currachs lay upon the beach. I set out through the village where islanders were repairing the thatched roofs of their cottages. A sign in an empty field offered ‘Donkeys For Sale’ and close to the shore lobster pots rose in abandoned stacks. A farmer driving a trailer load of potatoes homewards slowed to pass me.
‘Heading for the wreck?’ he asked. He looked pleased when I told him it wasn’t Father Ted but the islands themselves that had brought me here.
FACT FILE:
Getting to the Aran Islands:
Aer Arann (00 353 81 8210210, www.aerarann.co.uk) flies to Galway from 6 UK airports from £28 one way. Aer Arann flights to the Aran Islands (00 353 91 593034) from Inverin, Connemara cost 23 euros one way.
Ferries also serve the islands: Island Ferries (00 353 91 568093, www.aranislandferries.com); Aran Direct (00 353 91 566535, www.arandirect.com); Doolin Ferries (00 353 65 7074455, www.doolinferries.com). Return tickets 25 euros.
Accommodation:
An Dun, Inis Meain (00 353 99 73047, B&B 55 euros. Dinner 25 euros)
Man of Aran Cottage, Inis Mor (00 353 99 61301, www.manofarancottage.com, from 37 euros B&B, dinner 35 euros)
Radharc an Chlair, Inis Oirr (00 353 99 75019, B&B 40 euros)
Further information:
www.aranislands.ie
www.aran-islands.com
It's worth saying I have had incredible luck with the weather on my several trips to the Aran Islands. It's perhaps for that that the islands have always felt like the final magical place.
