Keep Clare Clean

No, not that Clare! We had some fun with the signage around beautiful County Clare and we soaked up its spectacular views. What can I say? This place lives up to the hype. Leaving Newmarket (Limerick/Shannon) we went to the coast on our way to Galway. First stop, the Cliffs of Moher. Yes, it's touristy, yes, it's crowded - but with reason. The rocks are spectacular, as is the feeling as you gaze out over the Atlantic ocean roaring below you. Apparently a couple of the Spanish Armada ships made it down here as they scurried towards their home waters after taking a beating from a storm. Out of the frying pan into the fire. Can you imagine what their reaction was - "land ho" (or whatever you say in Spanish), quickly followed by "Dios mio, estos son enorme rocas culo." The folklore that I recall was that a decent number of sailors made it ashore & hence the somewhat darker, swarthier appearance of some folks from the west coast of ireland. The official count is that 6 sailors survived - hardly enough to meaningfully contribute to the gene pool of the Galwegians. Anyway, quite a place. And, by the way, the coolest tourist centre around - dug into the rocks so you don't even know its there, minimises its footprint…very nice.
Leaving the cliffs, we tooled through the Burren, an eerie moonlike landscape, apart from dashes of emerald between the rocks. It's a huge limestone landscape, I guess formed by the presence of a warm inland sea some millennia ago. The past inhabitants used the plentiful limestone rocks to form the famous dry rock walls (PK was taking plenty of notes, given his interest in building rock walls). It really is something else, the labour that went into & still goes into, building these walls. The effect is really quite stunning. Even more interesting, we stopped at a megalithic burial site, the Poulnabrone Dolmen, likely 6,000 years old. Take that Stonehenge - although the capstone was only 1.5 tonnes. Still, it took quite an effort to build the thing. I dare say not many things we construct now-a-days will still be standing 6,000 years from now.