Back to the Burren

Today I returned to the Burren with NUI’s Mountaineering Club. It was a great opportunity; I was somewhat interested in joining the club but was turned off by their strict restrictions on gear. Today though they took it a bit easier to allow the new students to try out hiking in Ireland. We got on the bus at 10 and had an hour-long ride to the Burren area, the skies were gray and occasionally producing rain. Once off the bus we were divided into two groups, I was put into Group B with Norah (which was good because she was carrying my water and food in her bag) and all of the other Wisconsin girls that had come out to hike. It was windy and cold as we waited to take off and I wasn’t too excited about the hike, but as we began we found ourselves walking towards blue skies. The hike was nice and easy, we constantly stopped and our guide Padraig (pronounced Porick) would tell us more about the area and we were able to snap lots of photos. I was also able to carry on conversations and got to know Anna a fellow Wisconsinite and her friend Andrea from Austria a bit better. After an hour and half of hiking we made it to the ring fort midway up the hill and used its shelter for lunch. It was very windy in the exposed areas on the top of the rocks and I found I hadn’t quite dressed warm enough, but I was fine when we were moving. During lunch we caught up with Emil (our Swedish friend from the week before) and found out about his dive, he tried to convince Norah and I to do it, but I’m a bit intimidated. The group who showed up for the hike was a lot of the European students, which was nice, as it has felt like Americans were all I was meeting in classes and around my apartment complex. After lunch we headed the last kilometer to the top of hill. At the top the view was spectacular and I realized how far the Burren region goes. On the way back down we were on our own creating the path over the stony fields, which was difficult. The stone seemed to be flaking off and you never knew if it was stationary beneath you or ready to topple over. The rocks also had deep cleavages in it and had eroded away in other spots. One had to sort of jump from each rock and hope for the best, as Anna said it was like when we were younger and played hot lava with the pillows in the living room. There was no relief even off the rocks, when walking in the knee-deep grasses one had to be careful for hidden holes and rocks. It somewhat kept me distracted from the landscape but I still took lots of photos when I could. I don’t think they truly captured the scale of the hills and the beauty of it either. I went into the beauty of the Burren in a previous post but it was completely different getting out of the bus and actually being in the middle of it. I am finding that I prefer being active outside as a way to experience a place rather than tours of buildings or all day bus tours. The work it takes to see the views makes them that much more special and makes each experience unique. I was surprised to discover that I had been through Connemara before even stopping in Clifden (last post) on my first Ireland trip in 2001, but the truth is our time in the car just blurred together and it was hard to separate everything and appreciate all that I was seeing, but I know I will remember these trips forever. All in all it was a great day for a hike and a nice break from Galway. I’m taking the night off but tomorrow its back to writing an essay and city livin’.

Burren Photos