The Burren
Yay! We can have a bit easier day today as we're staying for two nights at Doolin. Our lovely host Ciara has also kindly offered to do our laundry for a small fee. We are delighted! Saves us the bother of finding a laundromat and then waiting round for it to be done.
We headed off in the direction of Lisdoonvarna today. A lovely little town! This is where Jan and Nick are staying tonight. Then we headed to the Burren Centre at Kilfenora. We succumbed to watching their video about the Burren and how it was formed by the action of glaciers. It really is a most remarkable landscape. Then we went through their museum and watched another video on Irish Folk music and dancing which was really enjoyable.
Afterwards we wandered throught the church graveyard next door. Kilfenora is known as the town of 12 crosses.
Moving right along, we drove to Poulnebrone Dolmen, an ancient burial site with tombstone, situated right in the middle of a fissured limestone pavement.
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| Time for tea just before Poulnebrone |
The pavement was quite difficult to walk on and you could easily step in a crack and turn your ankle. Barb was very very careful!
This burial structure is what had caught Barb's attention when planning the whole trip.
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| Fields of limestone! |
Next up was Dunghaire Castle at Kinvara, which we found readily on the map. So, off we go with our GPS doing her best to mislead us down winding tracks when really staying on the proper road would be totally fine. But we kept to the map, we're learning to ignore the minx!
Dunghaire Castle was a pretty as promised, complete with swans swimming in the lake in front. Barb is happy! Kinvara town itself is very pretty too with it's tiny harbour and million dollar homes. John found an ATM to replenish Euros and then we found a gem of a cafe called Ishka which had the best soups and brown bread. Barb declared the seafood chowder divine, while John slurped happily at his vegetable soup. (It's true!)
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| John working up to aslurp |
We had been recommended by Ciara to take the scenic route past Blackhead on the way back to Doolin. Spectacular views she said. She wasn't wrong! Unfortuneately bus loads of tourists thought so too. It made for tricky driving for John on the narrow roads and hard to find a park to take photos.
On the way back we found just how extensive the Burren and its limestone pavements reall are - about 100 square miles.
When we got back our dirty laundry was clean and beautifully folded on our bed. Yay!
We went for a drive down to Doolin harbour where you can catch a ferry to the Aran Islands or do a sea tour of the Cliffs of Moher. No thanks...it looked pretty bouncy out there even though the weather has fined up it's still windy. And it was unbelievably busy - pubs were already fillling up, and it was difficult to drive down the road because of so many cars parked by the side
We were determined to get into one of the local pubs for dinner tonight after being unable to get a table last night because it was so busy. Jan and Nick had invited us to Lisdoonvarna, where they had no trouble securing a table, but that would've meant a 20 minute drive each way for John and we were tired. We did get at table and had a pub meal you wouldn't write home about....but the atmosphere was great and we chatted to some lovely Australian ladies from Melbourne who were at the table next to us.
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