Burren trip proves fruitful after all

I WAS in west Clare about ten days ago and, because it was April and the sun was shining, I decided to go and look for vernal gentians in the Burren.

I think they qualify as the most wonderful and spectacular harbingers of spring in the whole country. I had an accomplice who knew the Burren very well and guaranteed she could take me directly to the best gentian sites.

We arrived full of hope, despite the fact that the landscape was as depressing as I’d ever seen it. It was dry and yellow with very little sign of growth but much evidence of hard grazing. Beefy-looking cattle were everywhere, along with their hoof prints and cow pats, and a hundred metres away a herd of feral goats peered at us suspiciously. We headed inland on foot, after parking on the coast road south of Fanore.