This small Co Galway island was once home to 127 people but now hosts daytrippers and wild campers looking for tranquillity and majestic summer sunsets
The last residents left the island for the mainland in the 1950s. All that remains today are the occasional day-trippers and holidaymakers staying in a few summer homes and visiting farmers checking on the sheep that rule the island now.On a sunny day Mason’s majestic beach to the West of Maínis is as inviting as the setting sun is in the evening.
The entrance appears almost as an optical illusion as you only start to have sight of the channel on the approach. Trust is required but it is in small measure given the number of rocks and heavy seaweed lurking just below the surface. It is time for oars, not a boat engine.Two roads criss-cross the island like “the cuts in the crust of a hot cross bun” – as Robinson put it – with the crossroads sitting at the island’s highest point.
The family have been passing the time with swimming, walking, fishing and playing an old Viking game called Kubb that involves knocking over rocks with stones. As many as 127 people or about 20 families once lived on this island, in the 1880s. Most cottages that dot the landscape are now derelict and crumbling. If only these houses and paths could talk. On Wednesday night, the island’s population soared from three to 15 with our group of overnight campers.
The family are already feeling the stress of having to leave the island this weekend for the third week of their holiday elsewhere in Connemara.
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