Guest Author - Mary Ellen Sweeney

The Burren is located in the northwest corner of County Clare, Ireland, an area of roughly 150 square miles. It was created during the last ice age, a unique geological outcropping, rare on this earth. The name Burren is from the Irish, bhoireann, which means "a stony place." It is known as Europe’s largest rock garden, where you can see plants from the cold arctic, the high Alps and the warm Mediterranean growing side by side.

The Burren is unique in more ways than one. It is a habitat for wild animals such as the rare Pine Martin, unusual birds, strange butterflies and moths, vanishing lakes, underground rivers, weird shaped stones, stone forts, dolmens, many old churches, and miles of caves.

In the Burren one can find magnificent monuments, such as the dolmen at Poulnabrone, which indicates that people lived here up to over 5,000 years before Christ.

The Burren has about 20 churches of varying size and age. There are 35 miles of caves, these caves were formed in the last 20,000 years and as such are very young caves. The most famous of these caves is the Aillwee Cave.

The Burren appears at first as a bleak contrast to rest of Ireland. It lost most of its soil due to glaciation and farming from the Neolithic onwards. A deeper look, though, shows the unbelievable diversity of species that thrive in the thin soil and from crevices in the stone where one can find an abundance plants which are usually considered rare. Spring Gentian is readily abundant. The creamy petals of Mountain Avens is just one of many different varieties of unusual plants which thrive in the Burren. The Mountain Avens is most definitely an Alpine species yet here it can be found growing beside the Dense Flowered Orchid, which is generally found in the Mediterranean.

Mullaghmore

The area around Mullaghmore is widely recognised as one of the most floristically interesting and diverse parts of the Burren. The Irish Wildlife Service had plans to designate the area as a National Nature Reserve. It should form part of the core area of the Burren National Park. Apart from the partially completed National Park Interpretative Centre it is largely undisturbed.

The Ailwee Caves

Nestling within the Burren, and lying just 4 miles from Ballyvaughan, are the Aillwee Caves. These were discovered in the 1940's by a local farmer. Remains of brown bears and indentations of the bear pits were discovered not far from the entrance. Bears have been extinct in Ireland for thousands of years.

Kinvara

This sleepy little village plays host to two great festivals. In May, there is the Cuckoo Festival and in August is Crinnui na Mbad, the Sailing Festival.

General Ludlow, Cromwell’s brother-in-law, wrote about the Burren in 1650. He said, “This is a country where there is not enough water to drown a man, wood enough to hang him, nor earth enough to bury him, which is so scarce that the inhabitants steal it from one another and yet their cattle are very fat, for the grass growing in tufts of earth of two or three feet square that lie between the rocks which are of limestone, is very sweet and nourishing.”

If you ever go to Ireland, make an effort to spend some time in the beautiful Burren. Here's some more information on the Burren.

Ireland 2006