Quick Aran Islands note

Sarah did an admirable job of keeping the blog going with the Aran posts - hats off to her.  I added a bit of colour commentary to the last few posts.   A couple of other thoughts about Inis Mor:

• Yes, they sell traditional Aran Island sweaters there, and they're very nice.
• There's quite a bit of livestock scattered about the island, though not too densely - mostly cows and goats, followed by horses, chickens, donkeys and others.
• There are pheasants all over the place - you can hear them squawking all day long.  You can even see them, as there is no long grass to hide in (their usual habitat).  I can't imagine that they're native, but there seems to be a lack of natural predators, so they flourish.
• In Victorian times there were "kelp factories" on the island.  They made hemp-like fibre (I believe), and there were even factories that extracted iodine from the kelp.  Some man-made lagoons from these times still exist.  Lots of kelp around still - you often get a sulphur-y whiff at low tide.
• Inis Mor appears to have two and only two land-based natural resources: tiny bits of scrub grass/shrubs, and LOTS of rock.  The whole island is a big limestone rock, with smaller chunks of rock scattered everywhere.  It's obvious that growing crops is impossible, other than a small garden plot here and there where someone has managed to save up some dirt over many generations.  Animals able to graze on the short, stubby grass were clearly a better food source - hence the grazing livestock.
• This brings up the stone fences.  The ENTIRE island - 12 km long, around 2 km wide - is a latticework of stone fences between 2 and 8 feet high.  These don't just divide the island into big fields, they divide it into very small yards or pens.  I can't imagine how much labour or how many generations it took to do this work.  However, the fences seem to be a by-product of rock-clearing efforts: I think the fences were simply the most efficient way to stack the loose rocks that were cleared in order to make room for a bit of grazing area.  And since there aren't any trees for fence posts or rails, rocks are a good choice for a fence.  You could easily cover the whole island with the rocks that are stacked into fences.

Sorry for the pictureless post.  Next ones will have more to look at.