[Irish_Thatcherite]

I don't mean to bash Clare - as a Mayoman, I'm programmed to regard only mountains, rivers and lakes as scenery, when I saw the pic of the island on this thread, and saw it was flat, I thought; no good.

Mayo tourism is very underdeveloped, Bord Failte can't see beyond Knock and Westport!!

Achill is a fine place, isn't it?

[blackbird149]

Ballina is in Mayo isn't it? I have equally happy memories of Castlebar and Ballina as a young child....

[Colosis]

Achill is a great spot and I'd even prefer it to the Aran Islands. BTW, I was at a druid wedding on Dun Aongus on Inishmore last month - lucky to get the weather when you choose to wed on high cliff tops on a barren west Ireland island in October! Mayo is great though, being a born Castlebar myself.

[SunkenCiv]

Unusual Places: Dun Briste – an Impressive Sea-Stack -- There are few folk tales about how the sea-stack became separated from the mainland. According to one of them,  on the place where the stack now stands used to live an ogre Geodruisge,  He was a most obnoxious character, often making life difficult for St. Patrick, who used to pray at the church on Downpatrick Head. The saint became agitated, and prayed to God to get rid of this tyrant. The next day the stack with the ogre’s residence was separated from the mainland. Geodruisg couldn’t escape and so he vanished. However, a passage in the journal by MacFirbis is a more likely explanation. It describes the cutting off, of the rock of Duross promontory by the sea. The residents were taken off using ship ropes in 1393. A few years ago, a helicopter landed several scientists on the stack; they were the first humans to set foot there for ages. They stayed there overnight and examined the surface where they found the remains of a medieval house, walls, cultivation ridges, and a corn grinding stone.

Image Credit: The Merry Monk/Flickr