The Burren

One of the highlights this weekend was our guided walk across the utterly unique landscape of the Burren. Where to start... wild orchids, natural bonsai, heart-shaped grooves, wishing trees, holy wells, volcano kettles, undulating organic stone, gentian flowers, fab chocolate cake, a unicorn grove (okay, I made that last one up).

As we walked, famine walls stretched across the mountains away from us; massive stone walls going nowhere, built by the starving. Eavan Boland's great poem on famine roads echoed through my mind; as she observed, the roads are "so powerful in their meaning and so powerless at their origin". But so much of the stone tells stories of the past, from colonial mappers to thirteenth century Cistercian monks to older, Celtic Christian communities, and yet older, pagan ones.

A remarkable place.