Travel: Ireland’s wild west

The problem with writing about the Burren is that there’s no consensus about where it is. Different people have different ideas. On my first trip there, I plaintively asked a girl in a café in Kilfenora, whose heyday was probably the 11th century (Kilfenora, that is, not the café) where the Burren was and she jerked her thumb towards the door. ‘Out there,’ she said. And so I made my way down the road to the nearest field to contemplate the celebrated flora. With beginner’s luck, I saw, for the first and last time, a curious little red frog. A few minutes later I came across the wild orchids for which the place is famous — as luck would have it, I was there in June, the best time for flowers. But then I found out that for geologists, Kilfenora isn’t strictly the Burren at all.

Just make for north Clare.