Black Fort, Inis Mór, Aran Islands, Co. Galway

My sister and I were on Inis Mór for fieldwork, surveying boulder ridges along the exposed Atlantic coasts of all three Aran Islands. Proper research, not a photography trip. But I had the drone with me, and the Black Fort demanded it.

We'd had heavy rain most of that afternoon. The limestone had gone dark and slick, everything saturated. Then the cloud broke apart from the west and a band of warm, low light caught the cliff faces. A rainbow appeared over the water to the north. I got the drone up fast.

From the air, the defensive logic of this place becomes immediately clear. The fort wall runs straight across a narrow peninsula, cliffs dropping sheer on three sides into dark Atlantic water. The chevaux-de-frise. The limestone terraces stepping down in layers. Green patches where soil has gathered in the cracks over centuries. On foot, you feel the exposure. From above, you read the geometry of it, the whole thing laid out like a diagram of ancient defensive thinking.

Dún Aonghasa gets the visitors and the attention. The Black Fort you have to walk to, and when you arrive it's just you and the wind and two thousand years of weather. I've always preferred it. The light lasted maybe ten minutes before the next shower rolled in, but that combination of warm sun on wet rock with the rainbow fading behind was worth every soaked hour of waiting!