A weekend in County Clare
I'm just flying back late at night from Shannon airport in County Clare, Ireland. In just over an hour we will be back at a London airport.
All this is such a contrast to our childhood trips to County Mayo, with an overnight ferry trip to Dublin and then a long car journey all day. But then so much of what I see in Ireland today is a huge contrast to that time. In the 70s and even more in the decades preceding, Ireland was viewed as a quaint (and possibly charming) backwater, whose main purpose was to provide dairy products and also labour for the building sites and hospitals of our sceptered isle of Albion. Oh, and and also to provide a good portion of what we thought of as the British creative arts, but we slightly ignored that.
Did you know that last year Ireland officially became richer than the UK, in terms of GDP per capita? I couldn't really get my head around this but when you look at the country today, you can see it. The roads are great, the houses are spanking new, the cars are latest models and the shops are full. And most pubs and shops have ads desperately seeking anyone willing to work as staff.
And the nice thing is that I don't think the country has lost its soul along the way. I'm sure that being in the EU can't have hindered the changes, but I don't want to think further on that sore point. We were across for a big music festival and also to meet up with friends who live there. The Irish joy in conversation and repartee is still undimmed, and most places have loud chat rather that silent phone scrolling. People swear a lot, but with gusto and pleasure and hardly ever with rancour. And they do love to take the piss or the Mickey.
And I can certainly assure you that the country still has the absorbing physical beauty that it is famous for. On our last day today we ended up in the amazing region of North Clare called 'The Burren'. This is a high and bleak plateau of about 50 square miles that is mainly limestone pavement country, interspersed with rough pasture. It has tame cows and wild goats and an extravagant flora of rock-loving plants, some of which have just started to emerge and which are in the photos in this post.
I also have a link here to a very windy video that will give you more of an idea what it's like:
Go and see it, and take your own measure of what the Green Isle is like.
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