Literally the “rocky place,” the Burren is just that. This 10-square-mile limestone plateau is so barren that a disappointed Cromwellian surveyor of the 1650s described it as “a savage land, yielding neither water enough to drown a man, or a tree to hang him, nor soil enough to bury him.”
Love that line. But he wasn’t much of a botanist, because the Burren is in fact a unique ecosystem, with flora that has managed to adapt since the last Ice Age, 10,000 years ago. It’s also rich in prehistoric and early Christian sites.
This limestone land is littered with hundreds of historic stone structures, including dozens of Iron Age stone forts. When the first human inhabitants of the Burren came about 6,000 years ago, they cut down its trees with shortsighted slash-and-burn methods, which accelerated erosion of the topsoil (already scoured to a thin layer by glaciers) – making those ancient people partially responsible for the stark landscape we see today.
Leamaneh Castle: This ruined shell of a fortified house is closed to everyone except the female ghost that supposedly haunts it. From the outside, you can see how the 15th-century fortified tower house was expanded 150 years later. The castle evolved from a refuge into a manor, and windows were widened to allow for better views as defense became less of a priority.
Caherconnell (Cahercommaun) Ring Fort: This is probably the most accessible of the many ring forts in the area.
Poulnabrone Dolmen: While it looks like a stone table, this is a portal tomb. Two hundred years ago, locals called this a “druids’ altar.” Five thousand years ago, it was a grave chamber in a cairn of stacked stones.
It is a great place to wander about for some quiet time with the wildflowers and try to think like a geologist (that is if there are no tour buses). We’re walking across a former seabed, dating from 250 million years ago when Ireland was at the equator (before continental drift nudged it north).
White smudges are often the remains of fossils. Stones embedded in the belly of an advancing glacier ground the scratches we can see in the rocks. The rounded boulders came south from Connemara, carried on a giant conveyor belt of ice and then left behind when the melting glaciers retreated north.
