Burren Country

by Paul Clements

  Black Head is not the only area where erratics are found. They are everywhere: on the northern slopes of Slieve Elva, halfway up other hills, on many sections of the flat limestone, along the sea front, on the shingle and sand, and 32km inland at Mullaghmore. My hunt takes me south along the coast to Poll Salach where the erratics plunge towards the sea. Here they have a scruffier look. Their texture is a darker, blacker volcanic consistency, pockmarked and aerated with bubbles, riddled with the geological equivalent of woodworm, and crumbling with cracks. They lack the roundedness of their more northerly or inland brethren. Running my fingers over the surface, I find they are heavily colonised by moss and encrusted with close-growing lichen, ranging in shade from a palette of tangerine through to orange, yellow and silver blotches. Cushions of pink sea thrift and the pale creams of sea campion surround their base. At the far end of the limestone at Poll Salach, one resembles a chipmunk with a funny nose.

  Not surprisingly after 15,000 years in one spot, some are showing their age. Since being placed here they have shrunk a little and over the centuries a small amount of weathering has affected them. Once exposed to the elements, they start to dissolve with rainwater and develop cracks through both the cold and the heat. Erratics suffer biological erosion, mechanical erosion, and chemical erosion and in some cases the algae and ragged tufts of lichen living on them are grinding parts of them very slowly into powder underneath. The lichens I have come across include map lichen, richly patterned yellow scales lichen and sea ivory, a tufted and branched lichen on rocks and walls which is tolerant of salt spray.

  In the central southern portion of the Burren a forlorn erratic at Sheshymore presides proudly on a clint, aloof and alone, the epitome of firmness in the middle of a large, flat, crisscross oasis of pavement. Its solitariness accentuates the loneliness of the place. Its base is decorated with clusters of milkwort and magenta geraniums. Early purple orchids up to 20cm tall blow in regal richness in the gentle wind, and holly and ivy are entwined within its crevices.

  ‘See one rock, see them all,’ said Socrates; not so erratics – they are uniquely different. In the extreme southeast, beside Mullaghmore Mountain, boulders on a grand scale line the pavement in fellowship, offering a variety of styles and shapes for the anorak erratic spotter or those smitten by the rock. Along the road between Treanmanach and Cooloorta, in the aptly named Rock Forest, they sit placidly beside and, in several instances, embedded in stone walls helping to hold them together. Some lean at curious angles of repose on the pavement and around the edges of a turlough with the distinctive whorls of the ordered staircase terracing a dramatic backdrop. Others are smooth and fissured with black, cream and honey-yellow blotches or garlanded with moss and lichen. A small number have a slimmer, leaner look, with indents and long, slender holes the length of a pencil. A few are diamond-shaped with bits chipped off. Another, a figure of eight, is surrounded by the bright bird’s-foot trefoil at its base while a neighbouring one is grinning widely with what seems to be a curled lip. The Rock Forest floor is a graveyard of randomly situated erratics. I have often wondered about the collective noun for them. Perhaps a ‘havoc’ of boulders would best characterise them at Mullaghmore, although a ‘settlement’ or even an ‘abandonment’ of erratics somehow seems more permanently appropriate.

  Not far away, lying to either side of Lough Gealáin, at Rinnamona and Gortlecka, you will find a variation on the erratic theme – possibly cousins or second cousins (non-geological family terms) but clearly a different category. These easily overlooked curiosities are known as mushroom or wave stones and are water-worn limestone blocks standing up to 3m high. As their name suggests their shape was caused by wave action over thousands of years.

  In the Burren’s eastern corner, at Keelhilla, Eagle’s Rock towers over a trio of precariously balanced, gravity defying erratics. One rests on two stones on a pedestal, another sits on a plinth the shape of a pot plant holder and the third member of the party reclines at an angle with wedges. Some have veins, fissures and patches of grass with pebbles on top. At the easternmost range of the limestone a solitary erratic sits on the edge facing inland, guarding the entrance to the Burren on the approach from the New Line keeping a wary eye out for strangers.

  The final contemplative leg of my tour of these rock refugees from another era ends appropriately at a long and skinny finger of land known as the Rine that reaches into the sea on the outskirts of Ballyvaughan. Looking out across Galway Bay and watching the play of light, I try to visualise the ice sheets that moved over this stretch of sea in a straight line, taking everything in its wake. It was a mighty cornucopia of noise and colour blazing its way relentlessly across and, like an angry giant, depositing missiles many kilometres away from their point of origin. The glacier has been gone a long time but its handiwork is still apparent. A pair of cormorants speeds across the top of the bay interrupting my thoughts. Farther out to sea a boat slowly trails white-foam wakes across the turquoise ocean. Water laps round the base of a suite of small erratics. They share a stony beach and fields along this spit of land with fat cattle and a silent, thin-legged horse and foal. Standing among shells and seaweed, as well as a tangle of nettles, ox-eye daisies, primroses, herb Robert, thistles and dandelions, they appear much more angled and flatter. Some of the Rine erratics have an off-white delicate coating; these particular bundles – neat, creamy circles of limeaceous splay – are the signature of countless seabirds swooping in over the coastline.

  Choose any part of this stark landscape that takes your fancy, go with the flow and you will find your own favourite boulder posing on its final resting place in splendid isolation. Some are of such importance that on the map you will even find them individually marked. Whatever their names and appearance, whatever their imagined expressions, they all have – unlike the American visitors – one historic fact in common: these totems have given up the vagaries of a wandering life in favour of a sedentary existence and look as though they will be in situ for thousands of years to come.

  Boulder-streak at Murrough, Black Head © Marty Johnston

  10

  A Woman for all Seasons

  We simply need that wild country available to us, even if we never do more than drive to its edge and look in. For it can be a means of reassuring ourselves of our sanity as creatures, a part of the geography of hope.

  Wallace Stegner, Wilderness Letter

  For more than twenty-three years Ireland’s sole contribution to a small column tucked away at the bottom of an inside page of one of Britain’s national daily newspapers came from the Burren. No more than 350 words long and taking just five minutes to read, the Country Diary in the Guardian featuring wildlife notes from different regions of Ireland and Britain, has a loyal following. The contributors write with flair about the fluctuations of the countryside, the weather, the migration of birds, or a particular aspect of the outdoors that interests them. It could be the depth of the winter snow in the Scottish Highlands, the cloud formations over Cadair Idris in mid-Wales, the whistle of an otter in Peeblesshire, or the antics of badgers in the Lake District.

  Between 1987 and 2010 Sarah Poyntz wrote monthly dispatches with knowledge and passion about the Burren. Taking the reader on a journey, she walked the green roads and the seashore, studied the wildlife, checked on the flora, observed the changing seasons, and had a friendly gossip about the weather with her neighbours. All these encounters were squeezed into a condensed and easily readable slot.

  When you have had your fill of revolutions, coups, famine, economic depression, the turmoil of government and political squabbling, you can turn to the Country Diary, memorably described by its editor as ‘a touchstone of sanity’. It is indeed an oasis in a troubled world, a restful way to start your day. Transport yourself to a specific area, close your eyes and quietly imagine the scene being created by these wildlife wordsmiths. Originally called the Country Lover’s Diary, the column has been running continuously since 1904. The contributors have included il
lustrious names such as William Condry who wrote the New Naturalist Guide to Wales, and A. Harry Griffin, a regular diarist for a staggering fifty-three years and author of many books on the Lakeland hills.

  In all weathers, in all seasons Sarah evocatively documented the moods of the Burren in its infinite richness, entertaining readers from the Orkneys to Oxford and from Penzance to Portarlington. An instinctive observer, her skill was in capturing the character of individual species and describing what makes the place special for her and her friends.

  To see the place through the eyes of someone who has lived here for a long time, I joined her for a walk across the limestone not far from her home overlooking Ballyvaughan Bay. Her delight in the place that she adopted as home is obvious. For many years she had been an admirer of the Guardian column and expressed an interest in becoming a diarist. The editor asked her to send an example of her writing but warned her not to hold out much hope as more than 300 people were on a waiting list to write a column.

  ‘I simply sent off a sample diary,’ she says, ‘and got a phone call to say they had selected me because they wanted someone from Ireland. So in January 1987 I began writing the column and wrote my final one in December 2010.’

  We walk along the shorefront near her cottage climbing over a low drystone wall passing primroses, cowslips and violets. Sarah pauses on an unsteady clint identifying within a few metres of each other the dazzling purple petals of bloody cranesbill, the fluorescent yellow vividness of bird’s-foot trefoil, kidney vetch, hoary rockrose, and large clumps of spring sandwort flourishing in a spectrum of colours. Field glasses in hand, she points up to the rounded top of Cappanawalla behind her cottage and its stepped terracing where the cattle spend the winter.

  ‘I love the Burren because the air is so pure. It has wound itself round my heartstrings since I retired here in the mid-1980s.’

  Originally from New Ross in County Wexford, Sarah taught English in Cornwall and Cambridge, later spending time writing and travelling in the US. It took her several years to believe her good fortune that she had found the perfect place to live on the Clare coast. Since then, she has never ceased to be amazed at the wonder of the Burren. Many of her best ideas are found simply by walking and exploring the fields and roads or the ruins of an abbey or church.

  ‘Sometimes you don’t even need to leave the house. It’s inspirational just looking out through our window on to the sea and across to Finavarra and the Flaggy Shore. I read a lot about the Burren and about the fascinating wildlife that we have and it all just seemed to come together. It’s such a beautiful place. When I was writing the diary I never made notes when I was out walking but instead wrote it in my head. I would go back home, start working on it, jotting down what I’d seen, putting the date on it, letting it simmer in my mind, and then writing about it.’

  Sarah has always enjoyed the research involved, constantly checking facts or dates, finding out about some of the lesser-known flowers, or the quirky habits of the stoat, pygmy shrew or feral goats. ‘I’m not a professional biologist or botanist but I have bought a lot of books and I supplemented the articles with information from these.’

  Characteristically thorough in her research she always wrote her diary in pencil in a pad and typed it on to a computer, sometimes cutting it back or embellishing it. She then checked and rechecked, omitting needless words, before sending off her polished précis to London where they appeared on the leader page, the paper’s most respected section.

  ‘There was a great brouhaha when the paper changed the format to the Berliner style and we were told to write 400 words but it got settled back down again to 350. Every word and letter had to count – even the letter “a”. But it was satisfying producing a good diary in a concise style and one of the nice things about writing was getting letters from Guardian readers.

  Not only did I get fan mail but I also got what I call fan persons coming to the door. They enquire in the shops where I live, then I get a phone call and people ask if they can come and see me. Sometimes they buy my book and ask me to sign it. They were from various parts of Britain and Ireland and when the diary appeared in the international paper, The Guardian Weekly, I used to get Americans coming. They were very kind and said they loved my diaries. Normally, as a writer, you don’t get any feedback so it was great to get human feedback. When the readers admired the Burren itself through the words I’ve written it’s nice that I’ve been able to pass it on and that they have taken the trouble to come and see it themselves.’

  Each year Sarah wrote thirteen columns recording the comings and goings of nature. ‘It’s hard to get the Guardian in Ballyvaughan. On one occasion when I picked it up, the diary had been cut so much I did not recognise it and there was no sense to it. I had a good rapport with the editors although once when I wrote about the caves I got the impression from the editor that they wanted it to be dumbed down, or at least to be made easy. The editor said it was rather academic, but it wasn’t a bit academic, and that was annoying. The extraordinary thing was I had five letters from people saying they loved that particular piece.’

  A strong literary flavour peppered many of her diaries. She loved to quote writers and poets and is extremely well versed. Frequently she invoked the words of Yeats, Chaucer, Keats or Ralph Waldo Emerson. ‘I feel they really give us nature in such a marvellous unified way in terms of capturing the beauty of the world. They certainly hit the nail on the head. I love the naturalness of Yeats’ poetry and the concept he gives of life without any stilt about it. It flows so beautifully. He was a tremendous thinker and I feel he hasn’t got much credit for that. I also like the natural history work of Seamus Heaney and Michael Longley who’ve both written poems about the Burren.’

  The author Eudora Welty, who wrote short stories, novels and essays about the American South, has also been an influence. Welty had a love of nature and an understanding of human nature, and she has a place in Sarah’s pantheon of favourite writers. ‘I came to know her work when I was in the States during the 1980s. Welty said she lived “a sheltered life” and except for short periods, she lived it in the house her parents built in Jackson, Mississippi. Her masterpiece is held to be The Optimist’s Daughter, which won the Pulitzer Prize in 1973. I appreciate her writing because it is understated and her style is pure and very fine. She writes of places she knows such as her hometown Jackson, and does so with a humane elegance and delightful humour.’

  Welty’s object in writing, says Sarah, quoting directly from her, was to ‘enter into the mind, heart, and skin of a human being who is not myself. Whether this happens to be a man or a woman, old or young, with skin black or white, the primary challenge lies in making the jump itself. It is the act of a writer’s imagination that I rate most high.’

  A quintessential diary by Sarah begins with an engaging quotation or reflects a moment of weather or wildlife drama. Some examples of opening lines include: ‘That it should come to this’, ‘Yesterday and last night we had a mighty Atlantic storm’, ‘Poor Nellie is dead’, ‘Our house was wrapped in fog’, ‘At last! I never thought the time would come’.

  Looking back on the hundreds of diaries she has written over the years Sarah says the one she is most proud of was in February 1999 which starts: ‘Two surprises and two alarms as I walked under Cappanawalla Mountain’, and includes two quotes, one from Shakespeare and one from Keats.

  ‘It was about my meeting with a herd of wild goats below Cappanawalla Mountain. It encapsulated almost everything that I love about the Burren – animals, landscape, plants but lacked birds.’

  With a glint in her eye Sarah admits to some special places that she has kept to herself. ‘I have one or two little secrets and there is one place that is so beautiful. It’s a small area of about 20cm square and it’s in a wall. I think I’m the only person who has found it and knows about it and I keep it to myself. I look at it through every season. Small ferns and flowers grow in it … but I can’t disclose its location because then it wouldn�
��t be a secret.’

  Sarah did not specialise in any particular topic but tackled a variety of subjects, throwing into her Burren recipe on occasions a dash of geology, archaeology, history, and local folklore.

  ‘Sometimes I got a clue from other papers and used something that I’ve read about elsewhere and later checked myself. I also included birds because they are such an important element of life here. The sea too has played a big part in my writing. I just have to look out and no matter what the weather is like I get inspiration from the colours, the physical aspect of it, or in the depths of winter when it’s roaring with a tempest.’

  In all the years that she has been living in the Burren Sarah has seen many changes – not, in her view, for the better. ‘Ballyvaughan is a special place but it has developed very badly over the years and sometimes I despair but I try not to convey that despair to my readers because I think there is enough doom and gloom around. I prefer the positive, happy and beautiful things rather than the opposite. They built nice little town houses in the centre of the village but there is another building near us that I think is absolutely disgraceful. It should never have even got planning permission. In the preparation of the site huge tenmetre-long clints of pavement were lifted up by an earth shifter, put into a machine and ground down into fist-sized stones. It nearly broke my heart to see that. In the end I had to drive past it without looking it was so dreadful. I think the county council and indeed the government is disgraceful at times.