The Burren
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39
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8
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5
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Search complete. 39 mentions across 8 episodes found for "The Burren".
Oct 7, 2026
Pat FlynnHOST
[upbeat music] Good evening, and welcome to this week's episode of Atlantic Tales, when we'll hear the story behind Aillwee Cave, which opened as a visitor attraction 50 years ago this month.
Pat FlynnHOST
[upbeat music] For millions of years, Aillwee Mountain in the Burren in North Clare held a secret deep within.
Pat FlynnHOST
That was until the 1940s, when local farmer Jack McGann stumbled upon it and discovered what we now know as Aillwee Cave.
Pat FlynnHOST
Years later, a chance meeting with the late visionary Dr. Brendan O'Regan in Ennis began a sequence of events that would see tourism becoming more a focus for the North Clare area.
Pat FlynnHOST
Roger Johnson, who had a background in mining, and Micheál Mulqueeny, a school teacher, arranged to meet David Drew to discuss whether it would be possible to open a cave as a visitor attraction.
Pat FlynnHOST
Mr.
Pat FlynnHOST
Drew mentioned there was a small cave beneath Aillwee Mountain near Ballyvaughan, which he believed at the time would be the only one in the Burren that could be opened to the public.
Pat FlynnHOST
Micheál Mulqueeny is one of the founding directors of Aillwee Cave and remembers visiting the site for the first time.
Maria TureaudGUEST
And in exchange for this, Maggie will receive a piece of land of her own and a house, which is definitely too good to be true given the, the circumstances of the time period, but Maggie doesn't see another way out.
Maria TureaudGUEST
So of course, she's whisked off to this very gothic manor in the middle of the Burren in County Clare, um, which if anybody knows, is a very desolate but beautiful place, absolutely humming with ancestral energy.
Maria TureaudGUEST
And of course, things are not as they seem.
Maria TureaudGUEST
The walls are whispering, and there's definitely folklore driving the entire plot.
Eliza KnightHOST
Yeah.
Eliza KnightHOST
Side note, I went to the Burren, uh, maybe two years ago.
Eliza KnightHOST
It's so amazing.
Eliza KnightHOST
Like, I, I was walking on all those, like, flat rocks that just, like, cover the ground.
Jody HalstedHOST
Now, I get a lot of people who will reach out to me and say, "But I found a day tour from Dublin to the Cliffs of Moher or to the Giant's Causeway." And yes, they can be done, but that doesn't mean that I really recommend it unless you are spending your entire trip in Dublin, you're not going anywhere else, and those are an absolute must-do for you.
Jody HalstedHOST
Because both of those trips, like the Cliffs of Moher, it's a seven-hour round-trip drive there and back, which doesn't give you a lot of time at the cliffs, and a lot of the time the tours will also fit in other things, a couple stops in the Burren maybe, or Galway.
Jody HalstedHOST
So it's, it's moving a lot when you're over on the west coast, and then it's a lot of driving, three to three and a half hours at a stretch.
Jody HalstedHOST
So really that day it's going to stretch to 12, 13 hours, and seven of it is going to be driving.
Graham DenneyGUEST
Well, um, firstly, we are expecting, uh, a lot of vehicles, a wide range of vehicles.
Graham DenneyGUEST
But, um, around that there will also be, uh, music, food and drink, uh, a market of local food and crafts traders, just to showcase the, the produce of the Burren area up here, um, and interviews with some of the exhibitors.
Graham DenneyGUEST
And, um, hopefully going, going back to the tractors, we're hoping to get some engine startups as well to, uh, to make a bit of noise on the day.
Alan MorrisseyHOST
Fantastic, and plenty of things happening, uh, for the family.
Carsten KriegerGUEST
I think I'll probably never lose the accent.
Carsten KriegerGUEST
Um, but it- the first time I came to Clare was about 30 years ago, um, with the idea to visit the Burren.
Carsten KriegerGUEST
Um, but back then, as you probably know yourself, um, County Clare for tourists was the Burren, and the rest was pretty much a blank map.
Alan MorrisseyHOST
Yeah.
Carsten KriegerGUEST
So to get to the Burren, um, we were cycling at the time, we had to go through, through South and West Clare.
Carsten KriegerGUEST
We landed in Shannon, then got bikes in Ennis and cycled on.
Carsten KriegerGUEST
And then by chance or rather by, by weather, we got stuck in Kilkee.
Carsten KriegerGUEST
So it was a bit of a day like today, and not the best day to be on the bikes, so we, our destination on the day would've been Doolin.
Tony RobinsonNARRATOR
The same design is used in other Neolithic monuments all over Western Europe.
Tony RobinsonNARRATOR
On the limestone landscape of the Burren in Ireland stands another haunting portal tomb, Páil na mRóm, the Place of the Sorrows.
Tony RobinsonNARRATOR
Under the shadow of this great megalith, the bones of the dead lay undisturbed for millennia.
Tony RobinsonNARRATOR
In the 1980s, archaeologist Anne Lynch excavated the tomb.
53 MINS LATER
speaker_26GUEST
It has triumphed over the demons of paganism, the gods and goddesses are dead and gone, and that all spiritual power now rests with the church and with its representative, the bishop.
Tony RobinsonNARRATOR
And yet pagan influences still lingered on.
Tony RobinsonNARRATOR
The limestone plateau of the Burren in County Clare is one of Europe's most distinctive landscapes.
Tony RobinsonNARRATOR
Deep in this stone wilderness stands the imposing medieval fort of Caer Conall, built around the 10th century AD.
Alan MorrisseyHOST
And maybe you'll be able to answer this more comprehensively once this develops.
Alan MorrisseyHOST
But from your perspective, and knowing what you know about some of the other UNESCO sites across the island, what do you think the Burren and Cliffs of Moher Geopark could learn from them aiming and vice versa? What could the other UNESCO sites learn from the experience of the Burren here?
Eamon DoyleGUEST
Well, that's sort of what people can learn from us.
Eamon DoyleGUEST
And I think one of the big things we have is the Geopark Code of Practice.
Eamon DoyleGUEST
So anybody who claims that you're green or environmentally friendly, whatever, from now on, you're going to have to be able to prove it with data.
Eamon DoyleGUEST
And the UNESCO, the Geopark Code of Practice here, that's what we've been doing.
Eamon DoyleGUEST
And that's what nearly 70 businesses are involved in, that local business around the Burren area.
Eamon DoyleGUEST
And they've all been doing that for the last number of years.
Oliver CallanHOST
A boule of bus for our guests here at the Blowing.
Oliver CallanHOST
Carina, you farm in the beautiful vista, well, I presume it's nearby, the Burren, because you couldn't do much farming on the actual Burren, but that's where home is for you.
Carina RosengraveGUEST
It is, yeah, below in Cresheen in County Clare, and I farm alongside my brother, Gerry, and we farm dairy beef and free-range eggs.
Oliver CallanHOST
And he has all this expertise that he went off to New Zealand.