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
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.
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
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
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.
