The Burren

After we left the town of Doolin and the Cliffs of Moher, we first headed east into County Clare to explore the other-worldly national park - The Burren.

I just read that it’s quite unique in its plant life, with Arctic, alpine and Mediterranean plants living side by side. I had taken a picture of these pretty purple-pink flowers…

… that I later found out are Marsh Orchids. That’s right - orchids in Ireland! Zoom in on the picture above and you’ll see the telltale orchid shape. All of the different wildflowers caught my attention…

… and they handled the strong winds very well.

This was a diverse collection -

… and then we wandered by a small grove of willow trees with bluebells under them.

The landscape here is described as karst, which we know in middle Tennessee as the open areas of limestone that can just pop up in the middle of a field. Well here, there’s miles of interesting formations -

We continued hiking upward…

… until we reached the top.

The winds were amazing. It was a windy day to begin with - probably 25-30 mph constant winds, but at the top, we’re guessing we were hit with nearly 60 mph blasts that almost knocked us off our feet.

We were left wondering why anyone would build rock walls in this bleak landscape -

As we descended, we were reminded we were in Ireland after all -

We then moved on to visit a dolmen.

Poulnabrone Dolmen is a portal tomb that contained bones around 5,500 years old. It is most likely that it originally was earth covered and topped with a cairn, but years of erosion have uncovered its structure.

It’s so cool that the upright stones are now only supported by the weight of the capstone.

We spent the night in Galway, but have few pictures to show for it. This was a multilevel bar we visited, continuing our roving tasting of Irish whiskies…

… and I wanted to show how perfectly a pint of Guinness can be poured, with the foam cap remaining in place above the lip of the glass. :)