Without warning, the vibrant blue of a spring gentian will stop you in your tracks. It is the Burren glitterati, a diminutive but spectacular blue that patterns the grass or limestone. It comes piercingly, like a bolt out of the blue, its five petals arranged around the mouth of a short trumpet. Blue, it is often said, is the rarest colour in nature. I have a passion for blue flowers. The tiny, pale blue common milkwort is found all over the Burren. Germander speedwell has bright blue flowers while the sky-blue harebell grows on road verges, limestone and in glades such as on the slopes of Eagle’s Rock. Blue tick-lists include irises, asters and the Himalayan blue poppy, but none to rival the gentian – the blue petals of happiness. One of the Burren’s most eloquent troubadours, the botanist Dr Charles Nelson, classifies gentian blue as the blue of the darker part of a clear summer sky at sunset – the colour that the Greeks gave to the eyes of Athena. He notes that not all spring gentians are like Athena’s eyes – there are hues and variations of the colour; some are Cambridge blue veering towards turquoise or ice-blue and a few even paler. Whatever assortments of colour, they assert themselves with eye-catching vigour – an extraordinary blue. Gentians have a short life. One year, on 23 May (often said by botanists to be the key date to be in the Burren for the best spread of wildflowers) I saw more than a hundred in full flower over the roadside stone wall at Murroughtoohy North at Black Head; two weeks later returning to the same location, I discovered they had all folded.
There are smaller blues as well: bugle and the misty blue bordering on ultramarine of the sweeping carpets of bluebells in the woods as well as the powder blue of the Common Blue butterfly. The natural history writer Paul Evans says the colour blue always surprises. ‘It knocks against the authority of white, pink and yellow and makes you look at the tiny details of the world with a fresh eye – it draws you in.’
Blue has a habit of overlapping with turquoise. Periwinkles found at Fanore have a blue tinge. The electric blue of damselflies jumps out at you when you are least expecting it. So too will the neon blue of a kingfisher, scarce here, but from the window of a B&B I glimpsed one on the River Fergus on the southern periphery of the Burren, darting past at high-speed in a straight line, flying low across the water.
Black Head and the sea surrounding it benefits from the benevolent light of the wide sky and sea. Stand here on a bright July day and, beyond the immediate stretch of pavement and rocks in front of you, the world is reduced to a blue horizon. There is a surfeit of sky. On cloudless days it is difficult to work out where the sea ends and the sky begins. But just as there are numerous shades of grey, so too there is a multiplicity of colours of the sea and its daily theatricality is restless and unpredictable. The processions of waves washing ashore have their own combination of moods. A typical Burren day ranges from calm, a quiet muttering, to flicks of waves, right up to a seething, roaring sea. The luminous colours are determined by the magnificent sky – the sky of all skies. Every minute, every hour, every day, each week, and in different seasons, the colours are changing. The coastal shallows, within a stone’s throw of the rocky coast, are a different colour to the mid-ocean waters. The whole scene looks different from certain angles, from the sea, or from the sky. Scientists say that water absorbs any light that passes through it and sea-water absorbs the longer wavelengths of red and orange light more effectively than it absorbs the short, blue wavelengths.
Pale aquamarine morphs at certain times of the day into psychedelic shades of turquoise and a strong cobalt blue. Seen through the rain-saturated mist, the sea can look grey. At other times the waters give off a pale opal or a metallic appearance. Sea blues cover the blue paint box from the light hues of porcelain and powder blue to the Grecian blue of a fine summer’s day. When it is on form, it can look blinding, like a glossy holiday magazine advertisement extoling the virtues of the waters around Santorini. On calm days it can seem to spread to infinity, a vast piece of still, blue-green silk with only an occasional gentle ripple, while other days it is an undulating silver with an aluminium-foil-covered look about it.
As you clomp across the limestone you will note flashes and tints of a ubiquitous burning golden yellow. After the dull winter months, many colour comparisons with the variety of shades of yellow are on show in the spring reawakening, harbingers of the coming summer: bananas, earth-moving equipment, a caged canary, a camembert sun followed by a big yellow moon and at other times a syrupy gold sun. Look closely and you will see evidence of the sheer intensity that Vincent van Gogh had in his paintings or on his wonky chair in Arles. There is the gorse almost turning to amber, and the fluorescent vividness of bird’s-foot trefoil conjuring up in our minds a plateful of wholesome scrambled eggs. Elsewhere, expanses of kidney vetch, marsh marigold and yellow rattle vie for domination. The hoary rockrose is as surprisingly bright as Ireland’s Golden Pages telephone book. In places it competes in the annual yellow battle of the Burren flowers with the richly coloured wild iris in marshy fields and around the margins of lakes. Keep your eyes peeled and you will find ragwort growing abundantly on the limestone, and later in the summer a similar-looking plant called goldenrod with its flowers clustered in compact heads. Round every corner, bunches of the pastel yellow of evening primrose and buttercups flourish, reminding me of a riverside nature study walk at primary school.
The warmth of yellow, exemplified at its best in the summer morning sun, is cheery and in some cases surprising. It excites and creates an agreeable impression. Yellow and grey on the limestone sparkle in contrast. Visitors are often entranced by the brilliant yellow with a dash of orange-yellow of the Tortoiseshell, Brimstone, or Orange-Tip butterflies. Perhaps the warmth is found in a patch of jazzy dandelions in which honeybees plunge their heads deep between the florets in search of nectar or in a field-full of cowslips, celandines and primroses.
Through binoculars you may capture in sharp focus the hooked, yellowish beak of a cormorant rock-posing along the shoreline. You may also be lucky enough to catch sight of the pale lemon-yellow underside of the nimble grey wagtail on the roof of a house as it makes a balletic leap through the air, then twisting and flying in long bounds. Or you may exchange glances with a male blackbird looking up from its foraging, its yellow bill and eye-ring a similar colour to the gorse.
In some instances yellow can appear mellow when a flaxen, pallid light spills across a valley. On these days the tawny gold patina of hay bales and July grasses seen in the fields around Ballyvaughan appears to have a kinship to yellow. And what of the association with yellow in the Burren names? Aillwee means ‘yellow hillside’, and Aillwee Mountain has its own yellow to live up to its etymology. The walking man directing you along the green roads is painted a welcoming yellow; in winter some leaves on trees give off a radiant yellow. As they go about their winter work with only a few hours of daylight, the road sweepers bring their own dayglo variation to boreens and byways. And in the village, the Rent-an-Irish cottages show off an appealing yellow trim to their windows and doors.
A farrago of reds ranging from the overlap of strong pink seen in roses through the amber glow at twilight to deep burgundy verging on purple, bursts out in odd places. Like scarlet lakes, the ravishing red of the tall poppy lines roadsides. The plum red of fuchsia (that becomes a ruby red later in the year) and the orange-red of montbretia seen in ditches compete with each other for red devil supremacy. The scarlet of valerian, common all around the Irish coastline, is found in the northern Burren along roadsides and on walls. On an afternoon bike ride I once stumbled across a pulsating, solid mass of vivacious, beetrootred flowers near Bell Harbour. The whole field was animated. I could not put a name on them but there were thousands by the roadside stretching across the pavement, revelling in the bright sunshine, in wondrous harmony with the limestone.
A fiery ocean sunset, complemented with clouds of deep crimson, is one of the evening delights. The dissolving sunset takes you through variations in the scale of reds: angry red rays indicating too much water vapour in th
e air through vermilion and deep salmon and plum dipping into amethyst. Late one summer evening outside Linnane’s bar on the Flaggy Shore as I cradle a raspberry-jam-red glass of assertive New Zealand Oyster Bay Merlot, the western sky appears on fire. For more than thirty minutes I watch the dying of the fierce light. A ball of sun is sinking below the medium high clouds that are shaped like a gigantic mushroom with a bright red ring around them. Slowly, the sun sinks into the sea, the flaming red of Marie Rua’s hair. The clouds look like a smoking volcano erupting. Gradually as the temperatures drop and darkness sneaks across the hills there is a brief period of brightness in the reddening sky before it dissipates into black while Galway Bay melds into the first twinkling lights on the Connemara shore. More lights flicker into action; some a much brighter wattage than others: amber, orange, white form an elongated necklace from Galway city along the coast with occasional gaps between villages. Looking down on it all, a solitary, glowing star is accompanied by a bright, slender moon.
Other reds nibble-noted in my journal: seen close up, the blood-coloured wings of the red admiral is an electrifying red as it performs an aerial ballet; sometimes the sun is a dull, red bar down in the west; alizarin is the red colouring of madder, a herbaceous plant with yellow flowers. Best seen in grykes set against the limestone, the magenta of bloody cranesbill is one of the most striking and celebrated of all Burren flowers, and when the sun and the mood are right, it is a deep, rich claret; the bright red of wild strawberries growing at the deserted village of Creig; the red of the rusty-back fern; the blood red of the robin’s breast; segueing into purple are the shiny autumn red fruits found on rowans, guelder rose, holly, spindle and blackthorn.
Purpling time in the summer catches the last of the pyramidal orchids and incorporates knapweed, thistles, buddleia and heather. The purple-pink wild marjoram with its bushy and erect leafy stems floods the roadside hedges around Rathborney in August. Sea pea along the shore near New Quay produces a stunning purple, while in the low December sun you can occasionally see a soft purple tint in trees that have shed their greenery.
Mid-May is a unique moment in the life of the Burren. On every track, and from every vista, hundreds of bright snowy-white flowers confetti the verges loading the spring hedges. Road tunnels of high hawthorn trees flaunt a sparkling, frothing mass of floating castles of whiteness. The fragile white hawthorn set against a blue sky is a memorable moment.
White is the sum of all the colours in the spectrum. Butterflies that flit in and out of the hedges produce their own spectacular shade of white. Along the narrow road leading to the Martello Tower on the Flaggy Shore on a morning of glaring sunshine I followed the directionless flight of a Large White. Soon, more than twenty were flirting freshly, too busy to take time to settle on one flower. A mating pair whirled past locked together at the tail, white on white, exquisite Burren eye candy.
The creamy white flowerheads of mountain avens (Dryas octopetala) sparkle in the sunlight, sometimes looking more ivory-silk than cream. Thousands congregate in clumps along the roadside at Aghaglinny on the way to Black Head. In the townland of Gleninsheen vast swathes of dryas and trefoil cover a mixed area of grass and limestone across to Aillwee Mountain. Along the uncut verges of roads and lanes, in shady woods, grassy hillsides, rocky outcrops, and on the pavement you come across these flowers in abundance, while the white cumulus of cow parsley, growing extravagantly along hedges of the single-track road to Carron, contrasts with it. Colonising many areas of disturbed ground you will also find a spray of bright, white rays fringing the yellow eye of the tall ox-eye daisies.
On certain days the hills glisten with sparkling caster-sugar whiteness; at other times they have a chalk-white appearance. From a distance they give off a shimmering snow-radiance. The whiteness disappears on dank, lifeless, winter days, but on crisp and crunchy ones the hills look dusted with a frosty sheen resembling fondant icing. On sharp, icy cold days your breath appears white in the air.
The Burren’s animals often speak of white. Our tour encompasses the washing-powder white of the feral goats roaming the hills, and the doves at the entrance to Aillwee cave which explode at times looking a white that is unnaturally sparkling. Whites are linked to the sea: the milky white flecks cresting the tops of the waves at Poll Salach, and the emulsion lily whiteness of the lighthouse at Black Head. Along the coast at Gleninagh, the hankies tied to branches of an ash tree have cauliflower whiteness. Turn over whelks on the beach and you will see a pearl-white interior; and each month, bearing down on it all, a full moon rises in radiated whiteness, bordering on the yellow of candlelight or buttermilk, as ascending plumes of white smoke rise from the cottages.
Catch a clear spring evening around half-past nine and you will be enchanted by one of the strangest of all effects that the Burren affords: a delicate, pale pink hue creeping imperceptibly across the rocks, rouging them with sunset. It is a lustrous salmontinted glow that settles for a few magical minutes as a long banner of pink on the higher terracing of the hills and sometimes on the limestone plateau. Visitors coming across this spectacle gasp in amazement, holding their breath in wonder. Some people call it ‘purple-pink’ and it even veers towards lavender. The atmosphere is diffusely illuminated as evening light and the pink coming off the clouds drenches the landscape. Such a wistful moment, although lasting briefly, holds mystery; it is logged in my cerebral files.
Search carefully and you will find infinite nuances of a rhapsody of pink. Sit outside Monk’s bar with your newspaper and post-prandial, and as night elbows day out of the way, let the soft, vaporous light wash over you. Gradually, as you read and sip, you will notice a pink luminescence stealing across the bay and a low sky slipping quietly into Ballyvaughan harbour. The residual cloud burns away the day’s embers and the sky turns a sensuous rosiness taking on a bubblegum pink as moonlight slowly mingles with it.
Pink flora highlights include clusters of sea thrift with its distinctive globes of flowers on tall stalks above cushions of green leaves. Its shading ranges from the watery pink of strawberry milkshake, through salmon, flesh-coloured to a touch of peach and, at its fading stage, a shell-like colour with the merest flush of pink. Occasionally it glows to a shocking pink clinging to the coastal verges and on the high grassy banks overlooking the sea around the lighthouse. Mountain everlasting produces tinges of pink on its silvery back although its leaves are white. In its summer best, billows of burnet rose have turned from white to a delicate pink. Sea shells cover the spectrum from mouse-pink to powder-pink and from cerise to carmine-pink. Traces of pink tinged with lavender, verging on white-pink are to be found on the upper hood-petal and the two laterally extending side-petals of the bee orchid.
Inspect the rocks and erratics through a magnifying lens, and you will notice they house fragile, conspicuous lichen communities representing fascinating microhabitats with a coloration all their own. Lichens are not plants but are made up of what scientists classify as a symbiotic partnership of a fungus with a colony of algae or cyanobacteria. They make their living from chemicals slowly dissolved from the rock as well as nutrients from the rain.
Lichenologists have identified no fewer than forty colours and there are hundreds of species of lichen. A close examination of these reveals a feast of vivid splashes of colour embroidered in unlikely places, embracing a variety of tints and overlapping tones: pale white, cappuccino cream, a brown-green suffusion, blue-grey, glossy black, olive-green, peppermint green, purple and pink. Yellow scales lichen is widespread and variations of this colour are to be found: yellow-pink/yellow-grey/yellow-green with a flushing of egg-yolk yellow rosettes, vermilion and deep yellow. On some, an abstract yellow, bordering on butterscotch, is apparent; it is similar to a toffee-yellow and in others a deeper orangey-yellow with a soupçon of tangerine or lemony streaks.
Out of the greys of the water, sky and limestone, colours jump at you incongruously. Take the case of Pond House at Finavarra which was part of the Skerrett estate. Built in the n
ineteenth century on its own private tidal lagoon, it stands on a sheltered foreshore headland near New Quay. An English artist, James Moores, painted the striped base of the house as an installation using a computerised reduction of J. M. W. Turner’s painting of Norham Castle. Painted in ice-cream colours, it consists of a blur of twenty-four bands of colour similar to a bar code to which the paint was then matched. A 2-mm hairline gap between each colour imparts chromatic depth and the paint has remained unscathed by the sea.
Browns come in dark and matt coalescing into orange, orange-brown verging on tawny, blazing orange and bright to rust-red. A medley of shades, depending on maturity and age, comes with wan biscuity colours akin to rich tea and fruit shortcake, verging at the other extreme to monk-brown or the colour of the Bourbon sandwich biscuit with chocolate cream filling. Brown brings its own particular mood. Earthy browns are found in the pebbles and stones at the Rine but you will also see white, grey, silver, inky black and obsidian black, while the beaches at Fanore and Bishopsquarter take on the colour of fudge. As a connoisseur of chocolate, the colour of cowpats has intrigued me. They range from the darkest end of the Bournville selection, through Cadbury’s Tiffin shades to the lighter smoothness of Lindt & Sprüngli double milk. Sea shells that I have picked up on my walks have incorporated taupe, aubergine and beige.
In the depths of mid-winter the hills shine black with a wet, tar-like appearance. Many birds are linked to black: the tails of the kittiwakes look as though they have been dipped in black ink; the jet-black of the male blackbird, the immaculate black of the jackdaw, and the shiny blue-black of the magpie all showcase assorted blacks. Black Head, although you will find black stones here and black guillemots, is not black at all. A walk along a quiet road in the coal-black darkness of a Burren night is something you will not forget; likewise, to experience the blackout at the Doolin cave and see the free-standing stalactite, branded by its owners as ‘the palest gleam in the darkest deep’, is not to be missed.
Burren Country Page 6
