Oilean Chleire 2

Holy moly - it feels as though we've been on a week's trip to a Greek island, not two days on Cape Clear Island! This small island, home to about 150 souls, lies a few miles off Baltimore (the original one) and is very green, very hilly and at the moment incredibly hot and sunny! We have walked up steep roads bestrewn with flowers, down tiny paths with shoulder-high bracken, teetered on dramatic cliff edges and squinted at the Fastnet lighthouse, and one of us has swam in the crystal clear water - no sign of the basking shark who sauntered in the other day but lots of leaping fish. We climbed up to admire the ruins of a signal station and old lighthouse, walked the length of the island to stare at some enormous standing stones, dragged our complaining feet to look at a lake full of dragonflies and enjoyed some goat milk ice cream, made on the local goat farm and mercifully free of goatiness.
It's a small world though. We were just having an evening drink when in came two friends from Ahakista; they were pottering around the islands on their boat and moored here for the night, and who should trip off todays's ferry but CarolineL and Bat .
We are now cream-crackered, sunburnt with blistered feet but exhilarated. And I survived the ferry. Catch up tomorrow.

This is south harbour - if you biggify you can see the glampsite (?) consisting of yurts, and the tiny road clinging to the edge of the mountain.

Oilean Chleire 1