Islands of Ireland: Cleaning up the plastic 'treasure' on Inishbroon

But I had no room on my kayak for a 12ft by 6ft refrigerator door which must have come from a commercial ship

Plastic clean-up on Inishbroon, County Galway

The presence of Daniel Defoe’s castaway classic Robinson Crusoe on a bookshelf in a pub in Letterfrack did not augur well for the upcoming kayak trip. Nevertheless, the trip from Trawmore Strand at Renvyle Point went off smoothly promoting thoughts of another 19th century classic, Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson. However, it was a poor type of treasure that was to reveal itself.

Inishbroon is an oddly-shaped island, quite like a fedora at a jaunty angle whose brim is the fully-circuitous pebble beach. Even seen from Trawmore Strand opposite, the island has deep gullies in its small cliff face as if clawed by the giant talons of a prehistoric beast. Up top, is fertile ground which slopes down to the northern shore and which contains the remains of lots of lazy beds — showing the importance of every scrap of land in the area in former times. The name derives from the Irish Inish Brún or Browne Island.