Burren The in soft focus
Flowers of the fairest dot this hauntingly beautiful part of Clare
THE Burren in County Clare is to be the focus of a two-day event taking place in May.
Experts, academics, and members of the public will all take part in the Geopark Academy 2024. Organised by the Burren and Cliffs of Moher UNESCO Global Geopark, the event will delve into the history and ecology of the area as well as future tourism development plans for the region.
Now, I’m someone who has delved into the region quite extensively, because, quite simply this harsh, strange, hauntingly beautiful area is unique.There are a few places worldwide which travel writers are obliged by long-established journalistic convention to describe as ‘lunar landscapes’. The Mojave Desert in California is one, the Namib Desert in southern Africa another, and of course the lava fields of Iceland.
To be fair, Iceland has the strongest claim to the moon title. But the Burren isn’t far down the list — what prevents it from being a full-fledged moon lookalike is the fact that it is crisscrossed with trenches that are, in spring and summer, teeming with wild flowers. At the Geopark summit meeting they’ll be calling it ‘a karst landscape’ but I like to think of it as nature’s version of crazy paving, the spectral limestone pavements looming out of the turf. And everywhere the rocks are polka-dotted with everything from Arctic so Mediterranean species of plant. There are even some flowers more or less specific to the Burren; you can’t find them anywhere else. Impressive or what.
The flowers compete for space with sphagnum moss, piles of heather, ferns and loose limestone chippings. It almost looks like the raw materials from which countryside is made, and some tireless gardener has been working day and night to create an outlandish garden.
These limestone terraces were at one time forested, thinly enough in places, with hazel, juniper, birch and whitethorn. The bleakness of the landscape today is due to erosion brought on by early human settlement and farming. What are we like, eh?
For me, one of the loveliest roads in Ireland from Ballyvaughan to Leamaneh Castle, a magnificent ruin with a striking history. When its owner, one of the local O’Brien clan, was killed in battle, his widow Maire Rua, married one of Cromwell’s officers to preserve her son’s inheritance. An Irish mammy who’d do anything for her boys.
For walking, hiking, rambling you’re spoiled for choice. My own preference is to park up and wander along the Mullaghmore Loop. But it’s possible you might even bump into you underground.
Deep beneath the Clare surface is a network of mesmerising caves where geology really gives it large. A mesmerising world of rivers, waterfalls, winding underground passages and lofty subterranean chambers house one of Europe’s finest and most accessible collection of stalagmites and stalactites.
In the Aillwee caves seeping acid water, lime and carbon dioxide have interacted for millions of years to produce chambers of silent beauty. Spoiler alert: only the Aillwee Cave itself can be explored without pot-holing experience.
Corofin Heritage Museum will point you towards many of the castles in the area. This was a particularly seditious part of the county. One of Cromwell’s generals, Edmund Lawlor — oblivious to the beauty of the flowers around him, or the chance of doing some al fresco flower arranging — famously wrote in 1651: “The Barony of Burren is a country where with not water enough to drown a man, wood enough to hang him nor earth enough to bury him.”
The Burren’s geology, flora, caves, archaeology, history and farming traditions set it apart as a place of great mystery and beauty.
You’ll find great stone tombs nearly 4,000 years old, cooking stones going back 2,000 years, castles and churches a thousand years old, and mass stones dating back to the penal times.
No wonder they’re having a symposium about it.