several times daily to Westport and Louisburgh from the island's scattered villages. Bus Éireann also provides transport for the area's secondary school children. Taxi There are several taxicab and hackney carriage services on the island. Cuisine Achill Island has several bars, cafes and restaurants. The island's Atlantic location means that seafood, including lobster, mussels, salmon, trout and winkles, are common meals. With a large sheep and cow populations, lamb and beef are popular on the island too. Sport Achill has a Gaelic football club which competes in the junior championship and division 1E of the Mayo League. There are also Achill Rovers which play in the Mayo Association Football League. There is a 9-hole links golf course on the island. Outdoor activities can be done through Achill Outdoor Education Centre. Achill Island's rugged landscape and the surrounding ocean offers multiple locations for outdoor adventure activities, like surfing, kite-surfing and sea kayaking. Fishing and watersports are also common. Sailing regattas featuring a local vessel type, the Achill Yawl, have been popular since the 19th century, though most present-day yawls, unlike their traditional working boat ancestors, have been structurally modified to promote greater speed under sail. The island's waters and underwater sites are occasionally visited by scuba divers, though Achill's unpredictable weather generally has precluded a commercially successful recreational diving industry. Population In 2016, the population was 2,594, with 5.2% claiming they spoke the Irish on a daily basis outside the education system. The island's population has declined from around 6,000 before the Great Famine of the mid-19th century. Demographics The table below reports data on Achill Island's population taken from Discover the Islands of Ireland (Alex Ritsema, Collins Press, 1999) and the census of Ireland. Architecture Few inhabited houses date from before the 20th century, though there are many examples of abandoned stone structures dating to the 19th century. The best known of these earlier can be seen in the "Deserted Village" ruins near the graveyard at the foot of Slievemore. Even the houses in this village represent a relatively comfortable class of dwelling as, even as recently as a hundred years ago, some people still used "Beehive" style houses (small circular single-roomed dwellings with a hole in the ceiling to let out smoke). Many of the oldest inhabited cottages date from the activities of the Congested Districts Board for Ireland—a body set up around the turn of the 20th century