A day trip to Clare Island
Clare Island is the largest offshore island off the coast of County Mayo and is situated in the mouth of Clew Bay. It can be reached by plane or ferry. We took the ferry from the Roonagh Pier. The ferry took abut 20 minutes to get to the island and from there you can walk around the island quite easily or rent a bike. There are no cars apart from the ones owned by the locals. There are about 130 people currently living on the island, some of which only live there at the weekend as the secondary school is on the mainland. There is one shop which also acts as the post office, there are some forms of accommodation and a pub (of course!) At the time there was no police on the island so you could pretty much do whatever you wanted. I'm not sure if that's changed since then...
While on the island we had a look at the Church, the ruins of an old castle, and saw some wonderful examples of thatched cottages. We had lunch at the pub, sent some postcards of course and generally had a very relaxing day.
