The Burren

So today I went on my walking tour of the Burren, which also included a lot of other places as well - but I'm just going to write about the Burren in this post. The Burren is an area south of Galway that is composed of limestone hills and valleys that were shaped by glaciers during the last ice age. I and about 15-20 other tourists were dropped off at the family farm of John Connolly for the tour. He is a pleasant young man who is trying to supplement the income from farming by taking people on walking tours through his family's 1000 acre land (they own two large hills / small mountains.) Of that, less than 100 acres are usable for farming. Anyway, we went through the fields in the valley and hiked up the mountain. This photo is looking back at the valley and the sea:And this shows how rocky the area is:
We stopped at several view spots along the way and John told us about the geological origins of the Burren and about the history of human inhabitants in the area as well. His family has been there for at least 200 years. Near the top of the climb we all lay down in the heather, and then we sat around and got to know one another for a bit:
On our way back down the hill, we saw several old churches in the valley near the farm that combine christian and Celtic heritage, and a rock pile built by the British for mapping and navigating.
Here is a picture of a recently born calf and it's mom in the green fields of the valley:
One of the unique customs of farming in the Burren is that the cows are driven up to the mountain tops in the winter (the reverse of the way it's done in most of the world) - because the soil is so thin, the limestone rock just beneath it traps warmth during the summer, and the ground even on top of the hills never gets much below 6 degrees Celsius. Because there are no cows up top during the summer, the grass has lots of opportunity to grow and might be a foot and a half tall by the time winter rolls around.

So I'm glad I did a tour that included some walking - instead of just riding a bus through the Burren - because I think I got a better feel for it on foot than I would have otherwise. (Most of the tour group saw some caves instead of walking through the Burren - but I heard they weren't that spectacular, and we have lots of caves in the US.)