Welcome back to my travelogue! LOL. I hope you enjoy the Ireland posts, and there will be a few more.
One thing about Ireland that we wanted to make sure we experienced was the scenery and landscape. That was part of the reason we decided to nix Dublin from our trip this time around as it is pretty metropolitan, other than just too much driving.
Anyway, we took a drive to the Burren as shown below.
The Burren is an area of limestone landscape formed by glaciers and has its own ecosystem. There are also ruins and ancient sites within it. It really covers a huge area and one could certainly spend a day or two just hiking the Burren. It sort of looks like a moon surface, although with plants LOL.
Where all that greenery is growing are crevices. I had a death grip on my phone because you don’t really know how deep some of those cracks are!
The exposed rocks are called clints and the crevices are called grikes. Just in case you get on Jeopardy. 😀
There are some farms in the Burren where cattle graze:
People made those stone walls, obviously. I don’t know if that keeps the cattle in place or not.
We came to this particular area to see one of the more famous dolmen called the Poulnabrone, which is a stone megalith.
In my mind when thinking about this as a megalith, I had pictured this to be enormous. It looks like it in this picture, but it’s really only about 6 feet tall! It’s dated to around 3600 BC. I think this is probably the oldest thing I have ever seen created by people.
I can’t imagine how they got that capstone on there. It’s one of those things we will never know. The Poulnabrone is a portal tomb and excavations have found bones in the area surrounding the stone.
This stone probably fell down at some point in time and probably would have been sort of the back of the tomb:
It’s very cool. I think this would be another must see site on a trip to Ireland.
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On a fun note, we got stopped by cows leaving the Burren:
They weren’t in any hurry, either 😀
I’m enjoying your travel posts immensely, especially since I don’t think I will ever go to Ireland. You are doing a great job of showing the beauty and the beasts (ha!). You look so happy in the photos, I’m glad you guys had such a wonderful trip.
It was a great time. First long vacation in a couple years and I wanted to enjoy it fully!
I’m so enjoying seeing your travel photos Lori! Keep them coming!!! I could see the ropes in place but to me it would have been cool to walk thru that portal…. i mean .. you never know… or maybe i’ve been reading /watching too much Outlander…lol Hugs! deb
I don’t think you would go anywhere if you walked through it LOL!
I loved seeing the picture of the stone wall. When I think of Ireland, I think of that kind of small stonewall 🙂
I love your Ireland posts! Keep them coming.
I love a good stone wall/fence. Another interesting glimpse into Ireland – thanks for sharing!
I’ve never seen the Burren with those crevices. So interesting!
We have some of those dry stone fences in our county. I always love seeing them. They are crumbling a bit like the one in the photo.
I’ve seen that stone statute before, but I too thought it was gigantic – not just six feet tall. Still very impressive though!
Such an amazing trip Lori!! JUST WOW!!!! Thank you for sharing with us! It is crazy how different it is over there & the beauty is endless!!!