The Burren reflects Ireland’s extraordinary geological heritage.
© iStock/Eugene_Remizov

Where Rocks Grow Wild

Torn between touring the Mediterranean and exploring the Arctic? See a bit of both, and experience Ireland’s natural beauty into the bargain!  You can if you visit the Burren, where nature’s opposites create one of the most amazing places on earth.

Comprising less than 1% of Ireland’s national land cover, the Burren is a world of its own, quilted across northwest County Clare and southeast County Galway. More than 75% of Ireland’s native plant species flourish here, yet the Burren is 3,700 acres of glaciated rock.

Like a protective shoulder, the Burren surrounds the community of Fanore.
© Darach Glennon/Darachphotography

A Place of Stone

The Burren is a geopark, a UNESCO-designated area of geological importance.  The name Burren comes from the Gaelic word Boireann, meaning “a place of stone.” In contrast to the rich flora that grows in grikes, or cracks in the stone, vast areas of the Burren are dramatically lunar.

In 1651 surveyor Edmund Ludlow, no fan of classic rock, derided the Burren as “a country where there is not water enough to drown a man, nor wood enough to hang one, nor earth enough to bury him.”

About 300 years later a visiting bicyclist (English poet laureate John Betjeman) described the “Stony seaboard, far and foreign,/ Stony hills poured over space, Stony outcrop of the Burren,/ Stones in every fertile place.”

Oh, but those stones aren’t just in the fertile place—they are part of its fertility.

The natural limestone pavement is one of the rarest land forms in the world.
© Ciana Campbell

A Planet Revealed

The story of this geological wonder began 360 million years ago when Ireland was submerged under a tropical sea.  As the waters receded, limestone sediment created a mind-blowing sculpture garden.

The karst landscape is a raw and stunning reminder that we live on a planet. Here, Earth’s bedrock is exposed and continually reshaped by rainwater.

Twenty miles away, the Aran Islands split from the Burren when sea levels rose
after the Ice Age. Above: Inis Mór.
© Julie Cason

A Place of Contradiction

In some areas, massive boulders known as erratics look as if they’ve been scattered by mythic giants. In other areas, flowers blanket thin, stony soil and emerge from stones like water from a fountain.

And not scraggly flowers, but the lush blooms you’d usually associate with tropical forests and Mediterranean gardens—orchids. Yes, Ireland has 28 species of native orchids, and 24 of them are found in the geopark of the Burren.

In spring, the Early-Purple orchid (orchis mascula) is the
first bloom to grace the Burren.
© iStock/ClaireORorke

A Place of Wonders

Here you’ll find flowers that, logically, shouldn’t co-exist: the Spring Gentian and the Mountain Avens. The intensely blue Spring Gentian has literal roots in the Balkans and parts of Asia. By contrast, the Mountain Avens is sub-arctic, a climber of Alpine slopes. Yet here in the Burren, they mingle.

Mediterranean and Arctic-Alpine flowers thrive in the Burren’s nutrient-poor soil.

You’ll also find calcifuge—”lime-hating” species of plants—flourishing beside calcicole, lime-loving species.  If ever there was a United Nations of flowers, the Burren is it.

Why such diversity? Cows. No, really.

Winterage Is Coming

Since the Neolithic era, farmers here have “walked the cattle” in a traditional practice known as Winterage. As winter nears, livestock are herded into the uplands. There they remove thick grass and weed species. This allows sunlight to reach the flora that lie dormant down below, safe from the trampling hooves.

And, oh what light. Sunlight here is famously high and dense, reflected by the sea and the limestone rocks. One might expect land exposed to the Atlantic to be bitter cold, but along comes another contradiction—the warming influence of the Gulf Stream.

As a result, Burren flowers don’t merely bloom, they burst forth from petra fertilis—the “fertile rock.”

Oh, I see: In the Burren, even the stones are alive.

With over 2,000 stone monuments, the Burren is one of Europe’s richest
archaeological landscapes. Above: Poulnabrone dolmen, a Megalithic tomb.
© Eoghan McGreevy-Stafford

In Sunlight and in Shadow

The Burren’s beauty shines just as bright at night. So says longtime Burren resident Ciana Campbell. “My love affair with the Burren began as we drove through it on a moonlit night in the late ’90s. The moonlight was reflected off the limestone pavement creating the most beautiful vista.”

At the time Campbell was a television and radio broadcaster for RTÉ in Dublin. “That experience confirmed my desire to move to County Clare and that became a reality a year later.”

A Mindful Place

Over the years, the Burren has become known as a “learning landscape,” a place to seek new perspective.  In the words of the late Irish philosopher John O’Donohue, the Burren puts you in a “mindful mode of stillness, solitude, and silence, where you can truly receive time.”

In a must-hear 2008 interview with Krista Tippett, host of “On Being,” O’Donohue spoke of growing up in the Burren, which looked as if it had been “laid down by some wild surrealistic kind of deity.”

“Being a child and coming out into that,” recalled O’Donohue,”was  like a huge wild invitation to extend your imagination. And it’s right on the edge of the ocean . . . so there’s an ancient conversation between the ocean and the stone going on. I think that was one of the recognitions of the Celtic imagination: that landscape wasn’t just matter, but that it was actually alive.”

The Burren’s ancient stones offer a new perspective on nature’s beauty.

A Fragile Place

This raises another contradiction. As rugged as the Burren appears, it is  remarkably fragile. A recent unfortunate trend among visitors to geoparks like this has been to build and post photos of stone towers. While this may feel like a gesture of homage, ecologically it is a serious act of damage.

So if you go, practice the richest contradiction of all, the Burren Code: First, leave no trace that you’ve been to a geological wonder, one of the most amazing places on Earth. Then, allow the Burren to become part of your inner landscape. To paraphrase my friend Ciana, it will create the most beautiful vista.

• Thanks to all who contributed to this post, including Ciana Campbell, Julie Cason, Eoghan-McGreevy Stafford, and Darach Glennon.
• Glennon’s photography of the West of Ireland is widely known and loved. Follow Darachphotography here and here.  
• Learn more about the Burren here and here.

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