Ireland: Around the North

For our last few days in Ireland (April 4-7, 2012), Eileen and I continued our journey north through the wild and rugged landscape of County Donegal, turned back eastwards to cross into Northern Ireland, and finally re-entered the Republic for a drive through the gentler and more settled east for our return to Dublin. 

It seems that the further northwest you go in Ireland the more awe-inspiring the scenery gets - something to bear in mind for any readers who think that the southwest is the only part of Ireland worth visiting. 

Our route north from the Burren in County Clare took us to Sligo, where we spent the night, and along the coast north to County Donegal.  I had a few more chances to explore seacoast for marine life: Common Limpets (Patella vulgata) clinging firmly to the stones or wedged in ledges near the tide line…

Common Periwinkles (Littorina littorea) clustered in a tide pool...

…and shells and bits of coralline algae on a rocky beach.

At one point I came across a Rock Pipit (Anthus petrosus), the most thorough-going coastal specialist of Ireland's songbirds, making its way along a cliff edge.

Lest anyone think that brilliant colours are confined to tropical coastlines, I submit this photo as proof that lichens and algae can brighten up a rocky landscape as thoroughly as corals.

This bright little Dog Whelk (Nucella lapillus) seems to be sitting in the mdst of an expressionist painting.

As I mentioned in a previous post, Eileen and I had not, originally, intended to get as far north as County Donegal, so neither of us had much of an idea of what awaited us there. It turns out that in the southwest part of the county near Killybegs is a sea cliff that is not only spectacular, but twice as high as the fabled Cliffs of Moher in County Clare.

The cliffs of Sliabh (or Slieve) League are nearly 600 m high, making them among the highest sea cliffs in the whole of Europe. Despite the wet and chilly weather (which, after a sequence if atypically lovely days, had reverted to Irish type), they were worth a short slog up the trail to see. They must be spectacular when the sun is shining, assuming that does happen now and again.

We pressed north through more beautiful County Donegal scenery. This is a distant view of Mount Errigal near Gweedore, the highest mountain in the county.

A closer view gives a good idea of why we regretted having so little time to explore. Unfortunately, we were bound by our need to catch an airplane in Dublin in a couple of days, and, like it or not, we had to press on, over the border into Northern Ireland.

Northern Ireland boasts probably the most famous scenic attraction in the island (and a World Heritage Site to boot): the Giant's Causeway, a collection of some 45,000 basalt pillars, formed during volcanic activity some 50 to 60 million years ago, on the north coast in County Antrim.  Seeing it was our main reason for visiting Northern Ireland (though we did spend time in Belfast, which is doing its best to make itself over from a war zone into a tourist attraction by building, among other things, a massive exhibition hall devoted to the Titanic.).

The Giant's Causeway comes by its name rather obviously - it does not take much imagination to see the parade of columns heading off into the sea as a series of steppingstones leading out over a now-sunken bridge (especially as the sequence picks up again on the other side, in Scotland - something the Ancients would surely have known). 

I confess I found the reality of the Giant's Causeway less awe-inspiring than the picture I had built up in my imagination - the giants involved, if any, were rather less gigantic than I had prepared myself to believe. Fascinating, yes - overwhelming, after the cliffs and mountains of County Donegal, perhaps not so much. Still, they are certainly not an everyday sight, and well worth the seeing. 

According to folklore (eagerly kept up by tourist operators) the causeway is the work of the giant Finn McCool, and various bits of the surrounding area have been given names appropriate to the idea of his former presence. This stone may look like the remains of Mr. McCool's ankle, and indeed it is referred to as the Giant's Boot.

Past the Giant's Boot we came to the Organ, and indeed this particular group of columns, some 12 metres high, does resemble a gigantic set of organ pipes. Geologists refer to this sort of structure as a colonnade, and you can find a detailed explanation of exactly how it, and the other peculiar features of the area, formed, at this website operated by Queen's University in Belfast. 

Here, Eileen kindly provides readers with an indication of scale (also see our first picture of the Causeway, above). The pillars of the Organ seem to be weathering out in sections, giving them something of a resemblance either to an ancient Greek marble column or to an oversized set of children's toys.

The path between the Boot and the Organ gave us a chance to enjoy some early spring flowers: Primrose (Primula vulgaris)…

Common Dog Violet (Viola riviniana)...

…and Common Scurvygrass (Cochlearia officinalis). Even among the handiworks of a giant, it's worth paying attention to the little things.

The Giants Causeway was really the last natural history-related stop on our Irish trip, but since I have broadened the usual scope of this blog to include some ancient monuments (hard to avoid in Ireland) I will end with a few pictures from the most famous of them. 

 This is Newgrange, and it dwarfed the dolmens, stone circles and so on that we had seen thus far. It's such a well-known and well-documented place that I don't need to say much about it here, except to encourage anyone visiting Ireland to go.   We spent our last morning in Ireland there before heading for the airport, and  there is something to think about in the jump from a 5000-year-old series of tombs (even a rather heavily–restored one)  to a jet flight across the Atlantic. 5000 years from now, will anyone remember us?

Ireland: The Burren

The northern coast of County Clare lies at the edge of one of the strangest landscapes in the world: the Burren, a mosaic-like expanse of limestone bedrock crisscrossed with soil-filled cracks. To early visitors, it was a barren wasteland. 

The Burren, however, belies its appearance – it is one of the botanically-richest corners of Europe, with a number of plants practically confined to it.

We were there too early in the season to see it at its best, though there were certainly plants about: this is a local form of Ivy ( probably Hedera helix var. hibernica) [I can hardly call it English Ivy in Ireland!].

 Before we turned inland to explore the interior of the Burren,  a final scan of the coast turned up a pair of Brent Geese (Branta bernicla) - Brant to us North Americans – swimming quietly amidst the floating seaweed.

After the geese, we headed eastward in search of a suitable bit of Burren countryside to explore (much of the area is part of the Burren National Park.  This bit seemed to fit the bill nicely: limestone pavement split into blocks as neatly as if an army of stonemasons had been at work.  Spring blossoms were already starting to emerge from the cracks in the stone.

As Eileen's photo shows, I decided that the best way to experience the area was to adopt an up-close-and-personal approach.

That way, I could get on close terms with lichens (this appears to be a species of Caloplaca).

This bleached shell belonged to one of the more than 80 species of land snail that live in the Burren, but I have no idea which.

There were not many flowers about yet, but the few I found were worth examining.  These violets may be the Wood Dog-Violet (Viola reichenbachiana), which has slenderer petals than the Common Dog-Violet that we found in the south.   Their petals are not overlapping, a marker for this species.

A visitor from the tropics might think this an odd place for orchids, but they are here nonetheless.  This is the Early-purple Orchid (Orchis macula).

This little yellow blossom is Tormentil (Potentilla erecta).

The star attraction on the Burren is the Spring Gentian (Gentiana verna), a highly-localised specialty (at least in Ireland) with, according to Wild Flowers of Britain and Ireland by Marjorie Blamey, Richard Fitter and Alastair Fitter, the brightest blue flowers in the whole of the British and Irish flora.  We may have been too early for most of the Burren flowers, but at least we were on time for this one.

The blue of the Spring Gentian really does glow against the grey of the limestone pavement.  Though a special attraction here, the species actually has a very broad range across Eurasia.  According to the account of the species on Wikipedia, it is one of the smallest of its genus, is notably rare in northern Europe, and has been the subject of a number of odd superstitions - notably that if you bring one into your house, you risk being struck by lightning.  I suspect that an early conservationist came up with that one!

The most striking symbol human presence on the Burren is the Poulnabrone Portal Tomb, one of the most frequently-visited ancient monuments in Ireland.  

Radiocarbon dating places it at about 3800-3600 BCE - meaning it has been standing on this lonely spot for almost six thousand years (the visitors' rope is more recent).  The Burren landscape may seem inhospitable (even to flower lovers), but the tomb stands as evidence that people have been here for a very long time.

Ireland: The Cliffs of County Clare

The peninsulas of County Kerry are lovely enough, and their fame is considerable - so much so that Eileen and I expected our March 2012 tour of Ireland to concentrate on the southwest alone.  However, one of the advantages of being on your own, in a rental car, in a country full of B&Bs, and without specific plans is that you can change your itinerary.  Eileen and I decided, instead of lingering in the Southwest, to continue north and make a circuit around the island. I'm glad we did.  To the north of County Kerry lies County Clare, and its seacoast is, if anything, even more rugged and magnificent than in the Southwest. 

We found this out once we turned North from the base of the Dingle Peninsula and drove down to Loop Head, County Clare's southwesternmost point.  We followed the path out to its famous lighthouse, finding ourselves increasingly high above the sea as we walked.

 Ocean winds over the point hold the vegetation on the cliff top to a thin, clinging mat, sprinkled with a few hardy plants like Common Scurvygrass (Cochlearia officinalis) -  not a grass, but a member of the same family as cabbage (Brassicaceae) and once, as its name suggests, a popular preventative against scurvy.

 From the heights, we could look over the sea at distant pods of Bottlenose Dolphin (Tursiops truncatus)  and the enormous, far-off dorsal fins of the second largest fish in the world, the Basking Shark (Cetorhinus maximus). Eileen even got to see a basking shark leaping out of the water, a sight I unfortunately missed. One of the problems of being on a high cliff, though, is that the marine life  below you is a long distance away.

On the north coast of Loop Head, not far from Kilkee, things became easier.  a stop to see the natural arch near Moveen brought us much closer to the ocean, and when I scrambled around to an adjoining inlet I was startled to see a Basking Shark foraging only a few meters from shore.

 The Basking Shark, like the even larger Whale Shark (Rhincodon typus), is a filter feeder.  It finds food by swimming slowly beneath the surface, its cavernous mouth agape, straining small organisms from the seawater through its gill rakers. That was, obviously, what this fish was doing, though all I could see from my perch on the rocks was the outline of a massive body just visible beneath the surface, a protruding dorsal fin, and the occasional glimpse of a tail. All the same, this was certainly my most thrilling wildlife encounter in Ireland.

Migrating Basking Sharks – An Liamhán Gréine, "Sun or Sail Fish" –  are fairly common sight along the northern and western coasts of Ireland.   They are docile creatures, and may allow swimmers a very close approach (there are a number of videos on YouTube to prove it). Unfortunately, we have returned the favour by grossly overfishing them, mostly for their oil-rich livers and their fins. This was one of the first sharks to be added to the Appendices of the Convention on International Trade In Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES), and one of the particular pleasures of seeing wild Basking Sharkss was in knowing that, as part of the Species Survival Network (SSN), I had had some role in lobbying for, and winning, this protection.

There were Bottlenose Dolphins at Moveen, too,  not much further from shore than the Basking Sharks.   Their dorsal fins can vary considerably in shape; these are, clearly, two different individuals.

 Even closer than the sharks and dolphins were Northern Fulmars (Fulmaris glacialis)  breeding along the rock ledges.  Though the word "fulmar" means "foul gull" -  a reference to their habit of expressing their displeasure by projectile-vomiting their stomach fluids - these are not gulls,  but the most accessible North Atlantic members of the shearwater and petrel family (Procellariidae).

 I found a good vantage point, and spent a considerable time watching nesting pairs displaying to each other, squawking and nibbling at each other's bills - all part of a day's work maintaining the pair bond.  Eileen had some difficulty tearing me away.

 By now, though, it was getting late in the day, and we had to make tracks if we wanted to see the most spectacular coastline of all: the famous Cliffs of Moher,  some distance further north. they are such an extraordinary sight that  tourist buses regularly make the trips from Dublin, on the other side of Ireland, to see them.

The cliffs,  composed of compacted mud, silt and sand laid down and compressed into rock some 320 million years ago, rise two hundred metres out of the sea.  To come upon them in the late afternoon, and watch the rocks redden in the setting sun, is a remarkable experience.

We spent the night in the nearby town of Doolin enjoying traditional Irish music in a local pub (well, you have to do that sort of thing at least once, and Doolin is famous for it).

The next morning - April 3, 2012 - we continued our journey northward through County Clare.  In the county's northwest we found not cliffs, but dunes running down to sandy beaches dotted with flat, weed-covered stones.

Fanore Beach, where Eileen is standing in this photo, is popular with swimmers - though admittedly not at the time of year we were there!

After Eileen retreated to the comfort of our car, I headed down to the beach to see what I could find on clinging to the rocks before they were covered by the incoming tides.  There were seaweeds, of course…

…in particular, lots of Bladder Wrack (Fucus vesiculosus),  its fronds studded  with the pea-sized bladders that give it its name….

…and its relative Spiral wrack (Fucus spiralis).

 Many of the rocks were covered with colonies of Common Mussel (Mytilus edulis), the same species frequently found in wine sauce ("edulis" means "edible").

Where the mussels hadn't completely taken over the surface of the stones I could find Common Limpets (Patella vulgata).

Little tide pools, in hollows in the rock surface that could hold water, provided shelter for creatures that found not survive exposure to the air (as well as, I'm afraid, odd bits of plastic fish net and other junk).

Just out of the water, sea anemones appeared as shrunken gelatinous blobs, their tentacles tucked safely out of reach.

By now the tide was starting to creep in.  I headed back across the sand, pausing to photograph a last few remnants of coastal life: a Dog Whelk (Nucella lapillus), the footprints of a wandering seabird, and a windblown  feather.