The Great Blasket Island - 2018

The Great Blasket Island is somewhere I've wanted to go for quite some time. A number of years ago I read Tomás Ó Criomhthain's book the "Islandman" while I was travelling through South East Asia and loved it. Since reading that book I wanted to go to the Great Blasket Islands and see for myself how beautiful life on the Blasket Islands would have been considering its location on the tough Atlantic Coast off the Dingle Peninsula in Ireland. The opportunity arose to visit the Great Blasket Island from a conversation I had at work. I heard of a new tour operated by Billy of the GreatBlasketIsland.net starting in Dingle Bay and heading out towards the island. When I called Billy he was able to tell me what the weather was going to be like for the weekend and that he could fit Rosa and myself on a tour at 9am that Saturday. We arrived into Dingle from Cork at 08:30am and then loaded our tent, food, sleeping bags and extra layers of clothing for us to keep warm at night onto Billy's Boat. It's a nice clean red boat called Peig Sayers with a deck on the back and the ability to move pretty fast through the water when the ocean is calm.

Billy introduced us to Fungi who was busy feeding at the edge of Dingle Bay. Fungi is a resident Dolphin in Dingle. As a young Dolphin, Fungi's mother bought him into Dingle Bay but for some reason she passed away and washed up on the shore leaving Fungi by himself in the bay to grow up.

The weather was fantastic and as we moved on we got to see coves and arches in the cliffs on the way out. Then we came across a pod of Dolphins feeding, working in lines catching fish. We stopped to watch them in action before moving on again. Rosa was delighted, as she had never seen Dolphins before. I had seen Dolphins in the past but never this many. As we moved on we came across a larger pod of Dolphins, who as they were fishing jumped up with excitement out of the water to toss their tails before returning to the water. As the boat moved the Dolphins followed us surfing the waves that came from the back of the boat as we sailed towards the island.

All of a sudden we stopped. Billy pointed out over the bow of the boat and told us he could see a Minke Whale. With just the mention of a whale we all looked quietly towards where Billy pointed with anticipation that the Minke Whale would surface again. A Minke Whale then rose up out of the water and we could all see it, not to long later we realized there was more than one whale around us, as three and then four Minke Whales made themselves visible. We even saw a young calf follow its mother. It was beautiful to watch as every once and a while they would raise their big tails out of the water in an effort to dive further to feed.

Billy then continued on towards the island. We were transported from the boat by a dingy to a small pier. We walked carrying everything we would need for the night through the remains of the houses on the east side of the island up close to Peig Sayers house which had level ground perfect to pitch up our tent.

Once we had the tent up we set off for a run heading north and going anti clockwise around the island. We could see a few hill's we'd have to get to the top of if we we're to get to the other side of the island. There were no houses on the other side of the island as we headed west. Lots of bog, hills, rabbits and wild looking sheep. The views where fantastic at the top of each hill as we could look back on to the Dingle Peninsula and across to the Skellig Islands clear in the distance. We ran to the very end only stopping to admire the view in places and to take some photos. In all we ran 15km that day.

Once we got back to the tent and after some rest we ate some lunch. We then walked down to the beach for a swim. The beach on the Great Blasket Island is very beautiful and clean. During these months a large amount of seals make themselves at home on the beach. As we were trying to swim a curious seal would pop it's head up out of the water 10 feet away, and then another until you clap your hands and they would disappear into the water again. We didn't spend long in the water because we know very little about seals and thought it would be best to leave them be.

As we hiked up the hill from the beach back to our tent it started to rain. I hadn't much faith in our tents ability to keep out water but as the rain poured down harder our little tent managed to keep out most of the rain. After a short while the rain moved on and the sun came out treating us to a beautiful rainbow.

To warm up we then went to the cafe on the island for a cup of tea and a bag of Tayto. We went back to our tent put on some warmer clothes and walked around the village before grabbing our food and walking to the north eastern side of the island to watch the sun set. Cheesy I know but this is the kind of stuff you do when your just relaxing and killing time on an island without electricity. The sunset was beautiful as we sat on a rock eating our dinner. We then went back to the village and met the people who were staying in the accommodation on the island. They kindly invited us in, to sit beside the fire and we passed the time with stories, chat and songs while drinking the beer, whiskey and wine each of us had smuggled across from the mainland for our night upon the island.

As Rosa and myself went back to our tent we got into our sleeping bags and listened to the Blasket Roar that comes from the sounds that the wind and waves make between the island and the mainland. The next day we woke up and had breakfast before heading to the beach for a walk. The tide was out and we could walk the full length of the beach with no one else on it except ourselves and the countless seals who were coming in and out of the sea as if they were on shift from a morning of fishing.

We packed up our tent, went for a cup of coffee in the cafe and just chilled out enjoying the time we had left on the island with the sun shining down upon us. Billy came back with the boat at 01:30pm and we made our way back to the mainland. Billy dropped us off at Dunquin Pier which has become iconic on postcards and we climbed up bringing our experience on the Great Blasket Island to an end.