Dublin bay as we entered on the boat
After a day travelling to the emerald isle by car and boat, a good nights sleep got us ready for the imagined wonders of the leprechauns homeland. With visits planned for a range of villages and landscapes each day would be a fun experience.
We were staying just outside of the quiet village of Corrofin in the middle of County Clare. The area is renowned as a fishing paradise, the large Inchiquin Lough neighbouring our cottage was perfect for nabbing a pike or too.
With a plethora of options open to the avid traveller the local tourist information point was the first stop. They had a good spread of leaflets and friendly staff that pointed us in the direction of the Burren national park. The Burren is an expanse of limestone pavement covering a large part of Country Clare. The lunar feel of the surroundings was an imposing surface to walk on and with the stunning hills in the background it was difficult to look at both your feet and the backdrop.
don’t step on him!
As with every wander the panic set in when the path seemed to end and the only way forward was a path that had to be classed as officially ‘off the beaten’ one…all that was missing was a hobbit and gollem and it could have been a set from Lord of the rings. For a change we took the correct course of action and walked 100yrds back and followed the ‘loop’ markers. We hoped that this would et us back on route, it did..kinda. We looped up a sheer face to find ourselves on the top of the burren. with stunning views and a raven passing over it was clear that the path we had followed was really not the one that took 40mins ‘easy walking’.
stunning views over the burren
The thrill of being in the wilds is always better than being bored on a path being told where to go! in saying that we headed back towards the car just in case we got fully lost! With the burrun being as harsh a landscape it was clear that only specialist trees were able to populate the rocky soil. Hazel trees were EVERYWHERE! It was clear that conditions were perfect for them and no one was complaining. In some places it seems there were being semi harvested there were that many.
After a hearty lunch of cheese sarnies, we spotted a stream of people coming from the opposite direction looking like that have walked for …shall we say about 40 mins….maybe on a nature trail…oh well never mind ey! we finally found the nature trail and thought we better do our bit and complete it as it was the reason for going! It was worth the extra trip as it was a mess of dragonflies! although it was a little lame compared to our earlier travels it was still fun to take it all in.


It seems the first day was maybe a little more action packed than I expected! I’ll leave the next bit of the journey for the next instalment! fun things like attack swallows and leaning towers are on the cards!