‘North Clare and the Burren blew my mind’

18.12.2023 - 15:09 / theguardian.com

One summer, many years ago when I was 17, I met a Dutch girl in a pub who was backpacking around Ireland. She said she was staying in hostels and was off to Doolin in County Clare the next day. Somehow, I hadn’t realised it was that easy to strike out and see the world. The next morning I took the bus to Doolin and began a lifelong love of independent travel and the open road. I never saw the Dutch girl again despite a full search of every pub in the village.

North Clare and the Burren blew my 17-year-old mind. I still remember the extraordinary quality of the light as it burst through the tapestry of clouds looking out across the limestone fields to the Aran Islands. There’s an air about the place. The area attracted woolly hat-wearing traditional musicians and every village seemed to have a pottery studio. The next summer I got a job pulling pints in a hotel in Lisdoonvarna and days off were spent hitchhiking the backroads of the Burren, taking in the majesty of the rocky landscape.

One of those trips brought me to Ennistymon, a vibrant market town known for its beautiful shopfronts and the thundering waters of the Inagh river as it makes its way over the ridge of the Cascades rocks. Returning to this special little town over the years, I have watched it become more diverse and attract a whole new demographic of passionate people committed to developing the community sustainably for locals and visitors alike. The only upshot of soaring city rents is that some small towns like Ennistymon are now thriving and bucking the trend of rural decline.

On a recent trip, my eyes were drawn to a line of wind turbines drawn across the crest of a hill to the south of the town. Pulling into the Falls hotel in the centre of Ennistymon a sign announces proudly that this is a carbon-neutral property. The clever owners have installed a turbine in the river that generates 90% of their electricity. The dancer and writer Caitlin MacNamara’s family once owned this towering house – Caitlin was married to the Welsh poet Dylan Thomas until his death in 1953.

Sinead Ní Gháirbhith opened the CheesePress on the town’s main street in 2017 ostensibly to sell cheese but in reality it’s where her customers come for their social fix with this one-woman powerhouse who could easily give the Fall’s generator a run for its money. She’s off at her new shop in Doolin when I call in for a coffee but her staff update me on the latest projects in the town.

Hometree is one of those new kids on the block, a tree-planting charity on the outskirts of the town, where Ray Ó Foghlú walks me through his polytunnel filled with thousands of organically grown native saplings. Ireland is the most deforested country in Europe, and Hometree is on a