THE WILD. WILD WEST

In search of a truly secluded getaway, Daniel Gayne explores the Blasket Islands, almost the westernmost point in Europe

- Daniel Gayne

Watching the waves thrash the jagged coastline and the sea rock and spit, it’s not hard to see how the islands across the three-mile sound got their name.

The Blaskets. “Dangerous place” in Old Norse, so I’m told. And so it appears today, as I stand on the edge of the Dingle peninsula, having left the islands a day earlier to avoid this rough weather.

Perched just off the coast of Ireland’s County Kerry, the Blasket Islands are about as far west as you can go and still be in western Europe (America is the next parish over, people joke) and wilder than anything on the Wild Atlantic Way.

And yet people have been drawn over and over to this place, despite its harshness. The Vikings who named it were followed by monks seeking closeness to God in what they believed was the edge of the world. More recently, an Irish-speaking fishing community beat out a tough life here for centuries, before evacuating in the middle of the last one.

On a fair day, it’s clear why they stayed for so long. Walking around Great Blasket, the biggest of the six islands, I spot Irish hares frolicking in the heather, watch a colony of grey seals spar and snooze, and see chaffinches and chiffchaffs swoop across hillsides as smooth and sculptural as a Henry Moore. If I didn’t have clothes on, I’d think I was in Eden.

From An Cro Mor, the island’s high point, you can survey the whole of this incredible landscape and see as far as the distinctive outer islands. You’re not likely to set foot on these, but you can get pretty close on a boat trip, which will also introduce you to a further bounty of natural wonders.

Puffins, Manx shearwater and innumerable other seabirds skim the choppy waters or crowd the craggy finials of the Cathedral Rocks, a great Gothic formation rising improbably out of the Atlantic. As our boat forays further into the sound, I see dolphins capering at the bow and even catch a glimpse of a spouting minke whale.