Bed and Breakfasts in the Aran Islands, Co. Galway

Town and Country Homes Association represent over 1000 quality approved Bed and Breakfast accommodations in every county in Ireland and on the Aran Island's. Our  B&B's on the Aran Islands offer comfort and value for money and you can be guaranteed of a warm welcome and kind hospitality when staying in Town and Country Homes accommodation. Whether you wish to stay in town or in the country, we have a bed and breakfast on Aran Island to suit you.

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Aran Island's Bed and Breakfast Accommodation

The Aran Islands are a group of three islands located at the mouth of Galway Bay, on the west coast of Ireland. The largest island is Inishmore (Irish: Árainn (Mhór) or Inis Mór, the middle and second-largest is Inishmaan (Inis Meáin / Inis Meadhóin; Aran Islands) and the smallest and most eastern is Inisheer.  Irish is a spoken language on all three islands, and is the language used for the names of the islands and many of the island's villages and place names.

The approaches to the bay between the Aran Islands and the mainland are as follows; the North Sound / An Súnda ó Thuaidh lies between Aran and Leitir Mealláin, County Galway. It is more correctly known as Bealach Locha Lurgan in Irish. Gregory's Sound / Súnda Ghríoghóra lies between Aran and Inishmaan. It was formerly known as Bealach na h-Áite. Foul Sound / An Súnda Salach lies between Inishmaan and Inisheer it was formerly known as Bealach na Fearbhaighe. South Sound / An Súnda ó Dheas formerly known as Bealach na Fínnise lies between Inisheer and County Clare. Book a B&B on Aran Island online for the best rates and availability.

Geology
 
The islands' geology is mainly karst limestone and is thus more closely related to The Burren in Co. Clare (to the south) than to the granites of Connemara to the north. Huge boulders up to 25 m above the sea at parts of the west facing cliffs have been shown not to be glacial erratics as originally believed, but rather as an extreme form of storm beach, cast there by giant waves that occur on average once per century.

Traditional Life

Since the islands were first populated in larger numbers, probably at the time of the Cromwellian conquest of Ireland in the mid 17th century, when the Catholic population of Ireland had the choice of going "to hell or to Connacht", many fled to the numerous islands off the west coast of Ireland. There they adapted themselves to the raw climatic conditions, developing a survival system of total self-sufficiency. Their methods included mixing layers of sand and seaweed on top of rocks to create fertile soil, a technique used to grow potatoes and other vegetables.  The same seaweed method also provided grazing grass within stone-wall enclosures grass for cattle and sheep, which in turn provided wool and yarn to make handwoven trousers, skirts and jackets, handknitted sweaters, shawls, caps, and hide shoes. The islanders also constructed unique boats for fishing, building their thatched cottages from the materials available or trading with the mainland. 

It is only very recently that the islands have had reliable electricity and communications. Most jobs on the island are in fishing or in the tourist industry. Pub life can be raucous, and islanders sometimes gather in the evenings to share music. It is worth remembering also that the islands are very small, and that island residents are all known to each other. You can be sure of a warm welcome and kind hospitality at a Bed and Breakfast on Aran Island.

Tourism

There are several Iron Age forts on Inishmore, including Dún Aengus and the Black Fort. Visitors come in large numbers, particularly in the summer time. Two companies operate a ferry service from Rossaveal in County Galway : the islander-operated Aran Direct and the government-subsidised Island Ferries. An air service (Aer Arann) is available from Inverin, both of which have connecting buses from Galway city. There is also a ferry service from Doolin, in County Clare (near the Cliffs of Moher) to Inisheer.

Literature & arts

Local Artists

One of the major figures of the Irish Renaissance, Liam O'Flaherty, was born in Gort na gCapall, Inishmore, on August 28, 1896. Máirtín Ó Díreáin, one of the most eminent poets in the Irish language, was also from Inishmore.

Visiting Artists
 
The islands have had an influence on world literature and arts disproportionate to their size. The unusual cultural and physical history of the islands has made them the object of visits by a variety of writers and travellers who recorded their experiences. Beginning around the late 19th Century, many Irish writers travelled to the Aran Islands; Lady Gregory, for example, came to Aran in the late nineteenth century to learn Irish. At the turn of the century and throughout his life one of Ireland's leading artists, Seán Keating , spent time every year on the islands translating on to canvas all the qualities that make the inhabitants of these Atlantic Islands so unusual and in many respects remarkable.

Many wrote down their experiences in a personal vein, alternately casting them as narratives about finding, or failing to find, some essential aspect of Irish culture that had been lost to the more urban regions of Ireland. A second, related kind of visitor were those who attempted to collect and catalog the stories and folklore of the island, treating it as a kind of societal "time capsule" of an earlier stage of Irish culture. Visitors of this kind differed in their desires to integrate with the island culture, and most were content to be considered observers. The culmination of this mode of interacting with the island might well be Robert J. Flaherty's 1934 classic documentary Man of Aran.

In the second half of the twentieth century, up until perhaps the early 1970s, one sees a third kind of visitor to the islands. These visitors came not necessarily because of the uniquely "Irish" nature of the island community, but simply because the accidents of geography and history conspired to produce a society that some found intriguing or even beguiling and that they wished to participate in directly.Isolated from mainstream print and electronic media, and thus reliant primarily on local oral tradition for both entertainment and news.

Tim Robinson's Stones of Aran: Pilgrimage (1986) and Stones of Aran: Labyrinth (1995), and his accompanying detailed map of the islands, are another resource on the Aran Islands. Robinson's work is a survey of the Aran geography and its influence on Aran culture from the Iron Age up to recent times. Robinson also has written, and continues to write, about the Connemara region that faces the Aran Islands on the Galway mainland.

Aran Island sweater
 
A rusting shipwreck sits on the shore of Inisheer, one of the Aran Islands. Fishing is a small but important part of the area's economy.The islands are the home of the Aran sweater, which has gained world-wide appeal during the course of the 20th century. Much of its popularity can be attributed to the enthusiasm and engagement of Pádraig Ó Síocháin, who deeply cherished the islands, their people and their native traditions after he first arrived there in the fifties, recording life as it was then on endless reels of film.

The Aran Currach

The (modern) Aran version of the light-weight boat called the currach is made from canvas stretched over a sparse skeleton of thin laths, then covered in tar. It is designed to withstand the very rough seas that are typical of islands that face the open Atlantic. Indeed, it is said that the Aran fishermen would not learn to swim, since they would certainly not survive any sea that swamped a currach and so it would be better to drown quickly. The islanders were always totally self sufficient. In calmer weather the Currachs would go out and spend the night fishing under the Cliffs of Moher , returning after dawn full with fish. Nowadays they are only used inshore, tending lobster-pots. More modern versions are still built for racing at the many local regattas, or "Cruinnithe" up and down the west coast of Ireland during the summer months. Conventional shoes cannot be worn, so the fishermen wear soft calf-skin moccasins called pampooties, made of goatskin or cowskin.

Popular Culture

The Aran Islands have recently found fame and experienced a boost in tourism since being featured in the television comedy Father Ted. The show is set on the fictional Craggy Island, but local sights such as the Plassey shipwreck feature in the opening sequence to the show, and the island of Inishmore hosted a Friends of Ted festival in 2007. The Aran Islands were mentioned in James Joyce's short story "The Dead" as a destination where native Irish is spoken. The Lieutenant of Inishmore is a popular play written by Martin McDonagh, which was first performed by the Royal Shakespeare Company at The Other Place, Stratford-upon-Avon, on 11 April 2001. It also had a run on Broadway in New York City where it was nominated for 5 Tony awards, and now is played all over the world. The last chapter of How to Die: or The Good Gatsby, a humorous novel by Wm. Douglas Warren, is entitled 'The Aran Islands' and is set almost entirely in Dún Aengus, although it is just referred to as "a round fort."

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