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Moving rapidly on from this first (and all too soon) cold taste of Winter to next Spring, when hopefully I shall make my annual pilgrimage to see the first gentians in the uplands of Clare in the West of Ireland. This landscape didn’t have a good recommendation from the Cromwellian general, Ludlow, who said it “yielded neither water enough to drown a man, nor tree to hang him, nor soil enough to bury him”. Anyone who has visited the Burren will appreciate just how accurate this description of desolation really is.
In years gone by, I used to whizz through this spectacular lunar landscape fairly quickly without really taking time to wander off the beaten track and discover the many unusual flowers set into this 100 square miles of natural rock garden. Whenever the heavens regularly unload their Atlantic moisture, the Aillwee caves always provide shelter from the deluge. Nowadays, I like to go on walks along the green roads and capture the flowers and landscape on camera.