Magnificent Seven have something in common with Burren
HERE’S an interesting puzzle for readers: What has the Burren World Heritage Site in Southern Ireland’s County Clare got in common with Glossop Rugby Club at Hargate Hill? And no, it’s not that half of the playing members of the club have visited this vast expanse of limestone escarpment during the many rugby tours I have organised to the area, and neither is it that both areas are ‘hilly’. Give up?
Okay, the answer is that both places have the wonderful flowers of the ‘Dactylorhiza fuchsii’ or common-spotted orchid.
And as you can see from this picture taken on the Burren recently, although they are ‘common’ they’re little beauties, and attraction enough to drag me away from the Guinness and oysters for a good half-hour whenever I’m on the West.
Among the limestone, and adorning the roadsides, they probably run into the millions on the Burren, whereas at the rugby club we have seven individuals, two of them white.
But a very important seven, maybe even the Magnificent Seven, and I must point out that I did face some ridicule from certain members for delaying the strimming of the banking by the club house to allow the orchids to flourish.
As president, I’m proud of many things our ‘little’ club has achieved, but these are special, and although they are now on the wane you could still catch a glimpse if you’re quick, as the banking will soon be getting a short-back-and-sides in time for the new season.
The Burren, an improbable moonscape, was lit like a large sugared loaf, and the blue skies drew us in.
If truth be known, one would need a year or two to explore the unique landscape completely, but give yourself a few hours and don’t miss the Burren Perfumery at Carron, both for the remarkable scones and coffee available in the café and the 10-minute film about the history of the Burren.
Check out www. burrenperfumery.com.
The rock itself has been carved by thousands of years of rainfall into a mosaic of gullies, or grykes, no more than a foot deep. Each one contains a unique little landscape of its own, complete with the rarest of flowers and animals, safe from the harsher and windswept rocky surface and the foraging tongues of cows a matter of inches away.
At least 70 per cent of the native plants found in Ireland can be found here, including many, many more species of orchid and the quite remarkable gentian violets; and not forgetting myriad other species from both the Arctic and Mediterranean. In days gone by the area was home to brown bears, and the bones of one of their number still remains in the Ailwee Cave, Ballyvaughan, where the creature died during hibernation.
These days the mountain hare, pine marten and merlin keep the naturalists happy, but even without animals the Burren is a place to stop and marvel, not least for the stunted little stands of hazel trees, or ‘fairy forests’.
More next week on the Brown Bear of the Ailwee Cave.