Rashers and Clams

Stephen Nolan, a guy from our church, invited some of us to go camping on a little island in the middle of Galway Bay. His dad is a clam fisherman and offered to ferry us out there for a night, so Ben, Scott, Stephen and I all headed out on Sunday afternoon armed with Maren's dad's sleeping bag and a pillow. At Clarinbridge, we were picked up by Stephen and his dad Willy who carted us in the back of their dark fish truck to their house to pick up supplies. At the Nolan's house, Willy got made us tons of toast as Stephen gathered the tents and other sleeping bags. As he got ready to head out, Stephen says, "Wait. Let's bring a frying pan and some rashers." What a guy! So we brought a pan and some bacon, then headed to the boat with our Irish s'more ingredients: digestives, marshmallows and Cadbury chocolate.
At this point I remembered I had forgotten my camera. Again. I left my camera when I went on my bike ride, when I went to the Cliffs of Moher and the Aran Islands with the 'rents and now as I was about to camping on a tiny island in the middle of Galway Bay. I mention this at this point because had I remembered the dang thing you could be looking at a fine picture of Cap'n Willy Nolan in his sweet fisherman stance as he drove the little dinghy out to his clamming boat. Old jeans stuffed into waders, a thick flannel shirt with the sleeves rolled up, One leg up, hand on hip, looking like he owns the bay- what a baller.
As we chugged out into the bay, Willy asked us if he'd like him to get dinner for us... confused we said sure and he dropped the dredge and pulled up about thirty clams! Apparently, they go for like 2 euro each in the posh restaurants on the bay, but here we were with the fresh of the fresh.

On the island, we spent the rest of our daylight exploring around and found that a small ribbon of the inner island gets flooded by the high tide, but has to recede out like a river with a fast current- it was really amusing to watch. Scott and I braved the mud to get on one of the little islands between the flow, but decided we wanted to buld a bridge of rocks to get back. Of course once we found out how much the mud splattered on the guys across the way, we spent the next twenty minutes launching rocks at the mud trying to splatter the others as much as possible.

We finished up by exploring the town of like 7 old stone houses probably form the 17th or 18th century then began to build our fire. Despite having excellent kindling, and dry wood, it took us some time to get it started. It was pretty frustrating. But once we got it going, we cooked up our rashers, ate them with some brown bread, mixed water with the grease and boiled our clams and mussels in it. The mussels were really tasty, the clams weren't too bad and the worst part was that you had to crunch a few grains of sand, but it didn't matter much. However, while we had been digging up mussels on the beach, Stephen pointed out the limpets and decided we should try eating them too. He had never had them and figured they might be just another something to toss in the pot. Check the link if you don't know what they are. As far as eating goes, they taste a lot like clams, but the texture is so freakin nasty! The suction cup was hard and chewy, the back looked and felt like and eyeball and the side had this tough snail-face looking thing. I will never eat one again. I washed it down with water and our s'mores. We melted the chocolate on the digestives on rocks near the fire and devoured three whole bags of marshmallows. After eating, we built up the fire and messed around, jumping over it and such. Stephen got the great idea of jumping over it in quick succession, me going third. Seeing only Stephens back, I made a blind leap, caught my foot on a branch and tumbled headfirst... on the other side of the fire. It wasn't a big deal at all, but the video makes it look like I died in the fire. Pretty hilarious looking.

We hit the sack around 3 AM and were up by 6:30 to pack up and meet Willy on the shore. Willy called before we were ready and we ended up running across the island trying to hop barbed wire fences early in the morning while laden down with luggage.
Despite the fact that we missed the bus in Clarinbridge and had to wait another hour, we made it back all right and it was one of the best camping trips ever however short it may have been. Best location anyway... I wish I could do it again sometime.