We spent the day on the island of Árrain Mhór, which in Gaelic just means ‘Big Island’. And it is fairly big, maintaining a permanent population of a few hundred, enough to justify a regular ferry service from the mainland, anyway. And here is the 3.30pm boat back to Ireland, coming in reasonably on schedule.
OK, it’s time to do the main panorama from my place of incarceration. The movie director in my head would still prefer to wait for the lighting to be just so, but to be honest, breaks in the cloud have been rare this last week — indeed, as I type this on Wednesday morning, it’s raining heavily and none of this can be seen at all.
To the left, Ladder Hill, depicted in close up a few days ago. Below it, tucked in its valley, Jamestown, the capital and one of the few places on the island where one can actually land a boat. To the right, Rupert’s Valley, more industrial (i think those are fuel pipelines visible) — between them, Munden’s Hill. All to be more intimately explored at a later date. In the direction shown, the next land is, I calculate, the Ivory Coast, or perhaps Ghana, at least 1,800 miles away.
Nothing happened today at all, except for the news — still unofficial, but it’s looking most promising — that I will be heading off to this rather remote spot at some point in the next few months, for a research project. We got the ‘yeah, OK, we’ll fund that’ email today. And very good news that is too, for all sorts of reasons.
Thanks to the problems depicted yesterday, my connection in Guernsey could not be made, so I was here for the night and the morning after. But there are worse places to be stranded for a night I suppose.
Other small islands featured so far on the blog (that is, islands like Guernsey, and not islands like Great Britain, or Honshu): Kangaroo Island, Stradbroke Island (Australia); Stewart Island (New Zealand); Wayasewa and Wayalailai (Fiji); Kvaløy, Snilstveitøy, Tromsøya, Sotra (Norway); Æbelø, Fyn, Sjælland (Denmark).
Denmark sneaks itself onto the blog again, courtesy of overflying it then changing planes in Copenhagen, on my way to Norway for a week and a half’s work. I love this, proof that nature can create beauty at so many different scales. It looks like a flower, don’t you think? I also think the single little cloud in the bay is a nice touch.
A couple of minutes’ searching on Google Maps suggests this is the ‘island’ of Æbelø, just north of the city of Odense on the north coast of Fyn (and on that island is also located Nyborg, which has also featured on the blog if you recall). It must be low tide here — I would bet this area looked quite different a few hours later.
Oh yeah, it’s day 650: and every 50 days I update the ‘Best of the Rest’ page. Only two new ones this time — I must be getting pickier. (Or less good at photography.)
The Yasawa islands stretch in a more-or-less straight line into the Pacific ocean from a point somewhere to the north-west of the main Fijian islands, and are probably former volcanoes. They are also to be my home (and the home of this Californian girl, and everyone else who was on the Yasawa Flyer catamaran out of Port Denarau marina early this morning) for the next few days. The word ‘Paradise’ is often overused, but in this case I think it’s entirely appropriate. This is a good time.
Being 42 