If you’re into otherworldly rocky mossy glaciokarst landscapes, add the Burren on Ireland’s West Coast to your list. If you’re looking to kiss the Blarney stone, want to spend far too much for a pint in a shamrock-laden pub or feel the need to rub Mary Malone’s brass breast statue – please for God’s sake, avoid the Burren at all costs. There’s a reason that the Burren never makes the list of top ten tourist destinations in Ireland because, well, it’s quirky, wild, really wet, rocky and on the surface looks nearly uninhabitable. There are charming villages like Ballyvaughan and Lisdoonvarna in the Burren, but traveling there is less about stopping at the local pub and more about visiting a prehistoric landscape. You’ll need a good pair of waterproof hiking boots and a hearty raincoat. Burren — named for the Irish Boireann, meaning rocky place — is my kind of place.
The Burren never makes the list of top ten tourist destinations in Ireland
The great nature writer Robert MacFarlane describes the Burren this way:
“To be in the Burren is to be reminded that physical matter is simultaneously indestructible and entirely transmutable: that it can swap states drastically, from vegetable to mineral or from liquid to solid. To attempt to hold these to contradictory ideas, of permanence and mutability, in the brain at the same time is usefully difficult, for it makes the individual feel at once valuable and superfluous. You become aware of yourself as constituted of nothing more than endlessly convertible matter – but also of always being perpetuated in some form. Such knowledge grants us comfortless immortality: an understanding that our bodies belong to a limitless cycle of dispersal and reconstruction.” —Robert MacFarlane
My husband David and I spent several days in the Burren hiking, beach-walking, and exploring the otherworldly terrain. Here’s your guide to visiting — where to stay, how to explore on foot, and a great side trip to a perfumery.
Fun Facts About the Burren
J.R.R. Tolkien spent considerable time here while writing The Lord of the Rings, which makes complete sense once you see the place. Tolkien scholars widely agree the stark, magical landscape seeped into his writing in numerous ways — most significantly through the character of Gollum. There’s a cave in the Burren called Pol Na Gollum (Hole of Gollum), surrounded by nesting doves that make a guttural, gurgling sound not unlike Tolkien’s tragic creature.
Where to Stay in the Burren
There is simply one place you must stay, and that’s Gregan’s Castle. It’s where Tolkien stayed, for starters. More simply, it’s divine — terrific staff who anticipate your every need, sumptuous rooms overlooking the vast garden, and not a hint of fussy chintz anywhere in the 18th-century manor house. Condé Nast Traveler rates it among Ireland’s top five country house hotels. I rate it my all-time favorite, period.
Owners Freddie McMurrow and Simon Haden share their remarkable art collection throughout the house — period pieces, modern art, Finnish tapestries. There are 21 rooms, each with its own name and its own personality. The hotel also comes with a resident cat, Miko, who holds court in the Corkscrew Bar and will absolutely cozy up with you by the fireplace.
Do book dinner reservations — Gregan’s is Michelin-starred. You won’t find shepherd’s pie on the menu, but you will find inventive dishes built from fruits and vegetables sourced directly from the garden. Chef Jonathan Farrell didn’t flinch when I emailed ahead about my alpha gal diet. Accommodating. Gracious. The whole place is.
Seamus Heaney at Gregan’s Castle
One more tip: stay more than one night. You’ll need at least a full day to linger in the great library, stocked with an extraordinary, eclectic collection of art books, nature writing, poetry, and illustrated historical texts. Nobel laureate Seamus Heaney was a frequent guest. I imagine him in one of the overstuffed chairs, editing his poems about the Burren. Consider these lines:
A time was to come when we yearned
for the eel-drugged flats and dunes
of a northern shore, its dulse and its seabirds,
its divisions of brine-maddened grass
pouring over dykes to secure
the aftermath of the region of the meek.
That was as much of hope that the purest and saddest were prepared to allow for.
Out of those scenes, she arrived, not from a shell
but licked with the wet cold fires of Saint Elmo,
angel of the last chance, teaching us
the fish in the rock, the fern’s
bewildered tenderness deep in the fissure.
That day the clatter of stones
as we climbed was a sermon
on conscience and healing
her tears a starting deer on the site of catastrophe.
—Seamus Heaney
When you do stay at Gregan’s Castle, say hello to Miko the cat for me.
Hiking in the Burren
Hiking in the Burren is wet and muddy and for the full experience, you really need a guide. Not because it’s dangerous — but because it’s bewildering. The paths aren’t always clear, and you’ll be marching over prehistoric rock where a curious protuberance turns out to be an ancient gravestone. You need someone who can tell you the difference.
We booked Tony Kirby — historian, raconteur, explorer, and comic all in one — whom we’d read about in the New York Times. Tony knows the Burren like the inside of his arm. Fair warning: he has zero patience for slow walkers, so be prepared to keep pace. Rain is a fact of life here, and Tony will not be pulling out an umbrella or coddling you through a fierce rainstorm (as we discovered firsthand).
What Tony Kirby will do is stop mid-hike, recite a Yeats poem at a stone wall, then barrel back through the tundra at breakneck speed. We spent half hour in a pre-famine rock dwelling, where we crouched and together imagined how dark and dank it was. “Dark, dank and remember the pig slept in the corner,” Tony reminded us. He helped incentivize an archaeological dig of the dwelling recently and was as excited about what they found as if he’d supervised the dig himself. Even after hiking with him for hours, he’d suddenly crouch over a “curious stone,” pull out his compass, and start measuring — wondering aloud whether this particular protuberance might be an ancient timekeeping device.
Whatever Tony charges, it’s worth that and more.
Ireland Oldest Perfumery
Cue fairy tale cottages, winding rock paths and natural scents wafting from windows and you’ve got a sense of the Burren Perfumery. Burren Perfumery is Ireland’s oldest working perfume house, smack dab in the middle of the rocky, queer landscape described above. I have a thing for perfumeries. When I traveled to Florence a few years back to visit my old college friend Monica, we spent most of one day visiting perfumeries. The Burren Perfumery comes with tours of the entire grounds (no charge), where you see how they make their candles. soaps and concoct natural perfumes and scents.
I have fair skin, red hair and look decidedly Irish, even though I don’t have a drop of Irish blood. The first time I came to Ireland, I walked into a pharmacy and looked at the creams on the shelf and knew immediately, “These are my people.” Us fair skinned women have issues people. The body creams and lotions concocted at the Burren Perfumery are literally made for my skin. They sell an All Natural Day Cream made with Apricot & Avocado oil, Rosehip and rose water that is so soothing to my rosacea prone skin. The owner, Sadie Chowan, wasn’t on site the day I visited which may be a good thing. You know how I get when I start fan-girling and I would have decided she was my best friend and overwhelmed her with oversharing my skin woes. All of Sadie’s scents are inspired by the flora and fauna of the Burren and she spends years researching, mixing and concocting her scents.
A Perfume Inspired by the Aran Islands
One of the most popular scents at the Burren Perfumery is Aran which of course I bought because I love the Aran Islands as much as I do the Burren. The packaging is simple with watercolor sketches of the earthy plants that inspire the scents. And there’s a tearoom! I mean an adorable tearoom with bistro tables and towering platters of scones and cakes and home-made soups. Allow at least 2.5 hours to enjoy and explore the Burren Perfumery.
There are a number of hikes you can do on your own in and around the Burren, namely Mullahmore and Slieve Carren. We wanted to spend time on the shore so chose the Black Head Loop Walk along Fanore Beach. The entire hike is 26 miles which was more than we were cut out for, but we parked at Fanore Beach and had a good hike along the water which shifted from sandy to crevice to rocky every half mile or so. We ended up moving to the cliff above the beach and wandering along farmland, looking out to the sea ending at an old ruin.