HIDDEN GEMS:HAD DOUGLAS ADAMS visited Dún Dúchathair he may well have ended up writing about "the fort at the end of the world".
Standing on the southern cliff edge of Inis Mór, with windswept grey limestone at your back and a sheer vertical drop to the steely Atlantic crashing below, you could be forgiven for imagining that civilisation was wiped out long ago and that this lonely outpost is the site of the last battle between land and crashing sea.
Dún Dúchathair, or the Black Fort, is not Aran’s star attraction. When you arrive on the pier you’ll watch a boatful of tourists disappear up the hill on bicycles, buses and horse-drawn carts towards the better-known Dún Aonghasa.
But if you’re feeling poetic and want to soak up the Aran island’s wild isolation without the snap-happy hoards, head in the other direction, about 1,500m outside the village of Kilronan, towards the cliffs on the south side of the island.
Finding Dún Dúchathair is half the fun. You may spot a signpost or two at first, but soon the road begins to disintegrate, then disappears completely, and you have no choice but to clamber over stone walls and start hopping over slabs of slippery limestone. Keep heading towards the cliff edge; if you cast your eyes left you should spot it eventually.
The fort is a bit of a mystery compared with the more famous archaeological sites in the west. Nobody knows exactly how old it is. Most think it is Iron Age, although it date from anywhere between 1,000 BC and AD 1,000.
Given that it sits on a jagged peninsula with cliffs on three sides, some say that it’s a promontory fort; others argue that it was originally a ring structure and that the rest has tumbled into the water.
It may not be as spectacular a construction as Dún Aonghasa, but the location is stunning.