Dún Aonghas by Day, Tí Watty's After the Last Ferry
Dún Aonghas plays to whichever boatload just landed; the real session waits for Kilronan to empty out.
The Engine Note Out of Rossaveal
The Rossaveal crossing, forty minutes if the bay behaves.
The first sound wasn't the sea, though the sea was right there past the harbour wall, grey and getting on with it. It was the tannoy on the pier at Ros a' Mhíl running through the safety drill twice, Irish first then English, flat and unbothered while the gulls tried to talk over her. Then the ferry's engine dropped a register, the ramp came up, and the queue of rucksacks and rain jackets found seats with the patience of people who've made this crossing before.
Ros a' Mhíl is forty minutes by coach out of Galway, past Spiddal and the last of the road signs that bother with English at all, and the crossing from there to Inishmore runs another forty, give or take what the swell is doing. There's a longer way, straight out of Galway city docks, ninety minutes on a calm day and stretching well past two hours when it isn't calm, and I'd wanted that one for the extra time on the water. The tide and the forecast disagreed with me, so it was Rossaveal, same as it is for most people who actually want to get to the island rather than spend the morning getting there.
The bay does what Galway Bay does. It sat us up and down for twenty minutes past Golam Head, and a man across the aisle turned the colour of the tea he wasn't drinking. Then Kilronan came up fast, the pier crowded with minibuses and a line of bikes for hire propped against the harbour wall, and the whole boat went from resigned to ready in about four minutes flat.
Dún Aonghas in the Afternoon, Tí Watty's After Dark
Dún Aonghas doesn't do subtle. The path up from the visitor centre in Cill Mhuirbhigh is twenty minutes of loose stone and switchbacks, and it dumps you out at a drystone fort wall with no barrier at all between the grass and a hundred metres of straight air down to the Atlantic. People go quiet at that edge in a way they don't anywhere else on the island, which is its own kind of applause.
By three in the afternoon it's a packed house and a tight set: minibus groups rotating through on a schedule, guides doing the same well-worn lines about the fort's age and its builders, day-trippers getting their photo at the edge and moving off to let the next lot in. Good show, knows its own running time. But it's playing to whoever's ferry got in that morning, and it knows that too.
The last boat back to Rossaveal goes around half six in summer, and Kilronan empties out behind it like someone's pulled a plug. Bikes go back on the hire rack. Minibuses queue for the same crossing. By seven the village is down to whoever's actually staying, which on a Tuesday in July was not very many of us.
Tí Joe Watty's doesn't open its session until the tourist trade's cleared out, and it shows. Two lads set up with a box and a banjo just after nine, ran through The Kesh Jig and Cooley's Reel to nobody in particular, and kept playing anyway. A third came in with a fiddle sometime after ten, no announcement, no soundcheck, just sat down and found the key. Someone at the bar sang a verse of a sean-nós air unaccompanied, the room actually stopped for it, and nobody clapped until it was properly finished.
That's the show nobody sells tickets for, because there's nothing to sell. The bodhrán ended up propped against a stool leg around midnight, skin still warm, and that was the only sign the set had happened at all.
Dún Aonghas plays the same set for every boatload, and plays it well.
The Verdict
Two very different evenings happen on the same island, split clean by the ferry timetable. Dún Aonghas by day is honest and well-run, a fort doing steady work for whoever the morning boat brought over. Tí Watty's after the last boat is the island doing nothing for anybody in particular, and on Inishmore that's the better gig.
Getting to the After-Hours Session
Book the earlier Rossaveal ferry out and a late one home, or better, stay the night on Inishmore.
Cash still matters in Kilronan after dark; don't rely on the card machine being switched on.
Dún Aonghas has no barrier at the cliff edge. Mind kids and skip the walk in a bad wind.
Check the crossing before you travel. Rossaveal boats cancel outright in a real blow, no exceptions.
One Day on Inishmore, Roughly
The last ferry back to Rossaveal the next morning left the pier lights still on and Tí Watty's shutters down, and somewhere behind them a bodhrán was drying out from the night before. That's the sound I'd go back for, not the cliffs. ■
