We were driving from the Cliffs of Moher through typically Irish, rolling, green pastureland on our way to our next stay in Galway when we came across this. Are we still in Ireland? What sort of geological mash-up is this?
This is the Burren (in Irish, Boireann or “great rock”) Great rock, indeed. Weird rock, as well. The limestone “pavement” has been eroded into large rectangles, or clints, with long, narrow fissures, called grikes, between them where the softer rock has eroded away. So weird that the rock eroded along gridlines!
Today we hiked in Burren National Park, our third of six national parks in the Republic of Ireland. I had to get out in it and see it up close. We chose a short loop-walk to the monastic site of St. Cronan. And guess what I discovered there. My first holy well! St. Cronan’s Well. Who knew?
Sure enough, there was a shrine to St. Cronan next to the well and faded strips of cloth hanging from tree branches overhead. [Serendipity] I felt like I had just won a scavenger hunt I hadn’t realized I was playing. Now I understand one reason people go in search of the wells; they’re spiritual geocaches. The thrill of the hunt may be what gets people out there, but it’s even more fun finding something you didn’t know was out there to find!
an easy hike to St. Cronan’s monastic site 
well, maybe not such an easy hike after all 
cow playgroup 
“grass growing in turfs of earth…that lie between the rocks” 
crossing the wall “in stile” 
St. Cronan’s church 
St. Cronan’s well! 
a standing stone at the well 
look carefully for strips of cloth hanging in the tree branches
In the 17th century, English Parliamentarian Edmund Ludlow, who served under Oliver Cromwell in Ireland, observed that the Burren “is a country where there is not enough water to drown a man, wood enough to hang one, nor earth enough to bury him…… and yet their cattle are very fat; for the grass growing in turfs of earth, of two or three foot square, that lie between the rocks, which are of limestone, is very sweet and nourishing.”
He is absolutely right. Rainfall disappears quickly into the grikes between the clints and makes its way into the limestone aquifers below. There is essentially no soil on the limestone pavement for living organisms to establish themselves. What grass and trees there are grow in small plots of soil between the clints, yet the grikes themselves are a haven for all manner of tiny plants from Mediterranean to alpine to arctic in habitat, all living side-by-side. They are miniature, terrarium-like ravines in a network of barren rock; I could explore them all day.
Very interesting terrain. Not at all what I expected. This, my friends, is exactly the reason I travel.