Cormac MacConnell: Tourist wonderlands you can drive to
The weather was somewhat brighter in Leinster than along the Wild Atlantic Way, for sure. I enjoyed myself, got my work done, and was glad to return to Munster when the week was over.
It is the national holiday season. I talked with many folk during the week, and the subject of holidays was high on their agenda.
I was surprised at how many of them and their friends had been booked to fly out to Tunisia, and had generally cancelled that trip, in the wake of the horrific beach slaughter there. Common sense rules.
But what amazed me, after all the conversations, was the modern holiday reality for so many of them that they have for years been flocking like lemmings not just to Tunisia, but to all the other Lanzarote-type sunspots of Europe, summer after summer, and most of those I talked with knew so little about our own native holiday attractions.
Some had never visited the west in their lives, and Cork and West Cork seemed as far away in their minds as Siberia. The shocking truth, yet again.
I can readily understand the lure of the sun-drenched holiday by the sea. It is true that our weather, maybe especially this July, has been wetly horrible too long and too often.
But, even during the tail-end of the recession, it is remarkable and even shocking that so many modern citizens of Ireland are so truly ignorant about the attractions on their own doorstep. It is almost a mortal sin.
There are a lot of bank holiday weekends every year, quite apart from the summer holiday breaks, which readily enable folk to travel for just a few hours down our improved road networks to see and relish the very best of their own country. It does not have to cost a fortune either.
One consequence of the recession was a sharp improvement nationally in both the price and quality of food and accommodation about everywhere.
Would ye believe that I spoke with three 30-somethings who had no idea at all where The Burren was? They were not immigrants either.
They were born and bred here (in Dublin), and had travelled widely in Europe for years, but the Burren was not on their sat-navs at all.
One of them thought that it was up near the Sligo border. This one actually had just returned from his fifth trip to Glastonbury. But The Burren? What is it? What does it have to offer?
I told them what I am telling any of you out there who have cancelled a Tunisian holiday — that the Burren in North Clare, that unique geological zone with a lunar landscape, grass that never stops growing, and the friendliest population in the West, should be compulsory viewing for all of us. And there is more genuine craic there in one summer night than in a week in Glastonbury or at all the electrified picnics there ever was. It is a wonderland which should not be missed by anyone.
It has everything going for it. Awed tourists flock to it all the year around for the experience. Even Prince Charles was blown away by the organic beauty of the place, just six weeks ago.
The Burren boasts everything touristic from herds of wild goats to healing spa waters to unmatched flora and fauna, to golden beaches and mighty cliffs, and more musicians per square mile than anywhere else in Ireland.
There is Corofin for the anglers at one gateway to it, and lively Lisdoonvarna of the matchmakers, and links with Merriman and Tolkien, on the other gateway.
The road around Black Head is so striking it takes your breath away. And there is the finest of craic of every variety every night, summer and winter, with the fabled village of Doolin still maybe the headquarters of the area’s hospitality.
I will leave it there.
Discover the rest for yourselves, those of you who have never visited before, and you will find it hard to leave when your weekend is over, and will be soon back again.
And there are no madmen on the beaches either. And the Burren is only one element of the Wild Atlantic Way which has more wholesome joy along its hundreds of miles from South to North than anywhere else in Europe that I have ever visited.
They used say one should see Naples and die. For Naples, substitute a magical fragment of our own island that any of you can drive into in just a couple of holiday hours. Think about it.
