Time Traveling on Inis Oírr

On today's show, we speak with Tomas and Marcin, who started the Aaron Couric experience, which we had the honor and delight of participating in back in April when we did a culinary tour in in Connemara, Galway, and the Burren.

The Aaron Kirk Experience was created to share the traditional craft of Keurig building and connect people directly with the heart of Aran Island's heritage, as well as to provide visitors with a hands-on experience to learn Keurig building skills and take part in rowing on the waters of Lochmore on Inishere, preserve living heritage, support the local community, and promote sustainable tourism.

And we were so fortunate to get a chance to participate hands-on in all of those things.

The guests on our tours really love hands-on experiences and honestly who doesn't especially on vacation and so you know rather than just bringing them for a guided walk on in a sheer which would have been lovely we were really excited when we found out about thomas and martin's new experience the banner experience really is the demonstration of how corrects were built and the opportunity to take one out on the lake and row for yourself.

And I think if you see what the boat looks like up until very recently, the corrects were the main method of transportation that everybody who lived on the Island took both between islands and with the mainland.

So anything that they needed for their lives, um, that they had to get from the mainland came over on these boats.

including cattle, kegs of beer, like all sorts of things.

So you have to imagine that these were incredibly structurally sound, pretty safe boats that people use regularly.

And honestly, when we were learning about them, and when we were watching the boat building, process, I kept thinking about how my stomach felt in the ferry on the way over.

I don't know if you could compare seasickness levels between a modern ferry and a traditional correct.

But honestly, I can't even imagine how long it must have taken to get there in a correct or what the waves would have felt like when you're piercing through them with that handmade boat.

Yeah, I mean, the entire experience like really does serve to, it's hard to imagine like a better way to like immerse you in as much as possible what life was like, you know, again, like, I don't know, even as recently as 3040 years ago.

And perhaps even more recently than that.

Well, the main again, the main method of, you know, cargo and people transportation from island to island.

And that just reminds me of like the two dates that I remember from our experience on Inishere was that they did not get electricity until the 1970s, which as a listener, even if that date was before you were born, it is so incredibly recent compared to when most people, certainly in the United States, got electricity.

And then I think the first car that was brought onto the island was not until the 1990s.

Just imagine what that's like.

Yeah.

So the other activity we got to do with them was actually digging a potato ridge and planting potatoes, which, you know, it's hard to... spend any period of time in Ireland without hearing something about potatoes, understanding how important they were to the economy, to the culture, to obviously the diet for, and then obviously the famine.

It's just, you can't spend any time in Ireland without encountering the potato in its various forms, but I've never actually got a chance to plant a potato.

And I think it was a really cool and unique experience to be able to do that.

And there is something really significant about the hands-on aspect of it and being like, yes, this is what it was like.

This is what it feels like.

This is the work that happened over and over and over again.

Yeah, absolutely.