Puffins Galore

Monday 5th & Tuesday 6th August 2013

Ireland Trip - Days 12 & 13

We were up bright and early on Monday, excited about our boat trip. When we arrived at the harbour at Portmagee, there were about 6 quite small fishing boats all tied together, ready to take tourists over the the Skellig Islands. We checked in with a chubby Irishman who seemed to be organising the passengers. I didn’t understand a word he said, but Claire told me we had to get on the second boat in line. This involved climbing down the side of the harbour on an iron ladder, into the first boat, and across to the second. We managed fine, but there were quite a lot of other people who were on the verge of falling in or having panic attacks.

The weather seemed perfect - blue skies and sunshine, and not much wind. The crossing to the islands took about an hour, as they are quite far out. I spent most of that hour terrified the boat was going to capsize, or that the woman next to me was going to be sick on me. Despite the good weather, the sea seemed quite rough to me, but it might have just been that we were on a small boat. The boat was full, but there were only 14 of us, plus the captain, who spent most of the crossing reading the paper. Despite Claire’s seasickness on the ferry, she seemed to love every minute on the small boat. I was glad to get off.

We saw a few seabirds flying around during the crossing, but the gannet colony on Little Skellig was our first glimpse of the birds close up. Apparently, the rock hosts the worlds second largest gannet colony, with around 60,000 birds there. Claire rather poetically said it looked like a snow globe, with the white gannets flying around above the rock, and the white poo all over the rock looking like a dusting of snow. 

It didn’t smell very poetic, and I was relieved and amazed not to get my head pooed on. We didn’t land on Little Skellig (it’s closed to the public), but after a quick tour round it in the boat, we were soon docking at Skellig Michael.

This was the island we’d been looking forward to, because that’s where the puffins nest. We were pleased to see that the puffins hadn’t left the island yet, and in fact were all over the place. I’ve seen puffins before, so I already know they are my second favourite seabird (after penguins), but Claire had never seen them. I don’t think I’ve ever seen her look so excited as when she saw her first one on land. They are very cute, and not really scared of humans, so you can get pretty close to them. As puffins don’t tend to come to the mainland, they haven’t encountered any problems with humans to make them scared of us.

We took loads of photos - Claire of the puffins, and me of Claire taking photos of the puffins. We walked up the 660 steps to the monastic area at the top of the rock, where there are some tiny stone huts that used to house monks in the 6th century. We didn’t linger there though, as the area was crammed full of people, and was extremely boring compared to the puffins.

We had our packed lunch overlooking the puffin burrows, before spending the remainder of our time on the rock mingling with as many puffins as possible. We didn’t see any pufflings, so we think they must have still been in the burrows.

We were sad to leave, and I was somewhat apprehensive about the return trip when the captain told us to put our bags in the cabin because they were going to get wet. We didn’t have to do that on the way there! The sea was rougher, and I was glad (not to mention smug) that I’d got my waterproof trousers on as the water was splashing all over us. I was actually less scared than on the outward journey though and quite enjoyed the return crossing.

When we got back to the mainland, we got changed, scoffed a couple of scones, and started our drive back home. We stopped for the night near Portlaoise, which was about 3/4 of our way across Ireland. It was about 8pm by the time we started looking for suitable overnight spots, and we knew we hadn’t got time to be too fussy. We settled on one of many small laybys off a tiny road alongside a canal. It was pretty quiet and no-one gave us any problems, but we did find that on the few occasions a car went past, it actually made George shake slightly! In future we will have to try and pick spots a bit further back from the road.

All we have done today is driven to the ferry port, hung around, got on the boat, ate loads more complimentary biscuits, and driven home. We got home at about 7pm, and, at nearly 11pm, I am still waiting for Claire to pick her favourite puffin photos out of the millions that she took. Hopefully I will get this blog posted, with photos, before midnight!

Our next trip in George will hopefully be in about 10 days time when we have a weekend off together. In the meantime, we will be giving George a good clean and polish, and adding a few more items to his inventory.