Islands of Ireland: Galway's Islandeddy is gorgeous 

A lagoon, swooping swallows and an old castle are all part of this island's charm

Islands of Ireland: Islandeddy, County Galway. Picture: Dan MacCarthy

If the surrealist painter Joan Miró had been asked to design an island, Islandeddy in County Galway would surely have been it. With its swirls and curves, impossible loops, holes and bits that seem to not belong but do, this gorgeous island is so pleasing to the eye that it deserves to be hanging above the mantlepiece.

Its eastern end is dominated by a low-lying grassy plain separated from the larger part of the island by a huge lagoon whose southern side links the two large parts by a gravel bank. This pattern is duplicated further west with another huge gravel bank that doesn’t seem to know what to do with itself, deposited as it was by the whims of the tides.