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Ireland - the greenest land on earth
From The Reading Eagle/Times: August 2005
As the sun warmed on my back, bees bumbled from Gentian to Orchid to Bloody Cranesbill and, as the umpteenth noisy tour group weaved off down the narrow road, the sounds of nature return to Poulnabrone. But not for long, if I'm lucky there will be a 5-minute gap before the next tour bus arrives.
High up on the limestone Burren in County Clare the dolman or portal tomb of Poulnabrone is the most photographed monument in Ireland. The Burren has an eerie, haunting quality (between tour groups) in part due to its stark, windswept landscape and partly to its 5-6 thousand year Stone Age ancestry. But I suspect its position on the tourist trail has more to do with its convenient location beside the Ballyvaughn to Corofin road so that tour groups can "do it" in a 10 minute stopover.
But there's always something else to see and do in Ireland so if you don't want to follow the general tourist trail there's no problem. So I set off across the Burren to find Cathair Chomain, a triple ring fort in the middle of nowhere........
........Ireland has all shades of green from the deepest green of the countryside to the faces of over indulgent stag night partygoers who now flock to Dublin from all over Europe for prenuptial celebrations. Dublin may take the lion's share of visitors, and going there is probably a must, but the west coast is where you'll find the soul of Ireland........