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Inishmaan ( Inis Meain "Middle Island") is the least visited of the three Aran Islands. Locals go about their lives seemingly oblivious to the trickle of tourists who come over, mostly on day trips from Inishmore. After Inishmore, you're immediately struck by how much greener Inishmaan is. Brambles and ferns shoot from walls, and bindweed clings to the limestone terraces. Here the stone walls are a warm brown and seem almost to glow with yellow moss. They're remarkably high - up to six feet - and form a stone maze that chequers off tiny fields of lush grass and clover. Yet despite this verdancy, the island still feels dour and desolate. Farming here is at subsistence level; farm buildings and cottages are grubby and dull, and soggy thatches sag over low doorways. The only sudden splashes of colour are from tiny cultivated gardens - the bright reds, pinks and oranges of geraniums, gladioli and carnations. The island is shaped something like an oyster shell. It rises in clear levels from the soft dunes of the north, through stages of flat naked rock, up to minuscule green pastures, then again up a craggy band of limestone (along which sit the main villages of the island), eventually levelling out on higher ground to meet the crinkled blowhole-pitted southerly edge. Inishmaan is the least visited, least touched by tourism of the three islands, though it has had visitors since the turn of the century. J.M. Synge stayed here for four summers from 1898, recording the life and language of the people. His play Riders to the Sea - which influenced Lorca's Blood Wedding - is set here, and his book The Aran Islands provides a fascinating insight into the way of life he found. Synge's Chair , a sheltered place on the westerly cliffs overlooking St Gregory's Sound, was his favourite contemplative spot. Traces of the culture he discovered remain. Some of the women still wear traditional brightly coloured shawls; Irish is the main language, though English is understood; and the islanders get on with what they've always done: farming and fishing. There's no hostility to visitors, but tourism isn't the islanders' concern. If you want to be impressed or entertained, you'll have to look elsewhere.
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