Nature’s gems in old quarry

IT WAS a beautiful summer day and my task was to take a group of 8 to 12 year olds on a nature walk as part of the Lough Ree Environmental Summer Festival.

This festival is based in Lanesborough, Co Longford and the walk was to take place in a wooded amenity area called Commons North on the outskirts of the town. It was originally a complex of quarries producing limestone which was shipped out by barge from a quay on the lake. The quarrying stopped around 1960 and the place became derelict and over-grown. Recently the county council has cleaned it up and put in access paths.

I only had time for a quick recce before the walk but what I saw took my breath away. After a short stroll through young woodland on the lake shore I reached something called the Second Quarry — a wide amphitheatre of low cliffs from which the limestone had been quarried and a level floor with as fine a selection of summer wildflowers as I’ve seen anywhere outside the Burren. There were early purple orchids, eyebright, lady’s bedstraw, purple vetch, ox-eye daisies, and mounds of wild marjoram filling the air with an oregano scent — marjoram and oregano are basically two names for the same plant, though the matter is complicated by cultivated varieties.