Bare grey pavement, deep grass cracks, the Atlantic three miles west
You can reserve a seven night limestone walking week in the Burren, printed both ways
From $1,680 per person, two sharing a double room, for seven nights in May, June or September. The spread here is very wide. Same ground, same guides, same beds, same figure, and two weeks that barely resemble each other. Both are printed below because the office cannot control which one turns up, and will not pretend otherwise.
Reserve one of these weeksSend the form whenever it suits: it never shuts. Someone here replies inside one working day, and no charge arises at this end.
One week, written out twice
One set of dates, one set of rooms, the same guides and the same $1,680. The variable is the place itself, which answers to nobody here. Both readings appear below because both are real.
At its best
At its best the pavement is dry by Thursday and you walk across the rock instead of around it. The grikes, the cracks between slabs, hold spring gentian in flower: small, very blue, an inch above bare stone, with mountain avens and early purple orchid in the same crack. Air is clear enough to pick out the three Aran islands lying flat on the water to the west, and the shore goes copper for the last hour of light. Evenings are long. You are back in the village by nine with the hill still lit. Two of the seven days run along the low coast road with a guide who farms here in winter and can date the walls you pass. Boots dry overnight. Nothing is cancelled and nothing is cut short.
At its worst
At its worst the same week is wet from the ground up. Wet limestone is a skating surface, so the two pavement days move down to lanes and green roads, which is the right call and still a loss: you booked to walk on the rock. Gentian shuts in cloud and cold, and after a late spring it may not have opened at all, so the crack you are shown holds grass and standing water. The islands sit behind weather for six days out of seven and you never see them. Wind off the Atlantic turns the coast section inland. What still stands: the beds, the food, the guide, the mileage and the figure. You walk seven days in Ireland in full rain gear and see very little of what brought you.
One deep limestone crack seen from above, grass and small blue flowers inside it
The Burren covers about one hundred square miles of County Clare in bare carboniferous limestone, scoured to rock and left that way. The surface breaks into slabs, called clints, split by cracks a hand wide and sometimes three feet deep, called grikes. Soil, shade and water collect down inside the cracks, so the plants grow below the walking surface: spring gentian, mountain avens, and orchids that elsewhere in Europe sit hundreds of miles apart. The rock runs west and stops at the sea in a low grey shore, and the Aran islands offshore are the same stone carried on. There are almost no trees and very little topsoil. In sun the whole plateau reads silver. In rain it goes dark and slick, and that single fact drives most of what follows.
A day on the pavement
Days start and finish in the same village, with no road transfer over forty minutes. Walking is five to seven hours and seven to ten miles, with three hundred to twelve hundred feet of climbing, on rock, green road and boreen. Nobody is asked to scramble. Two days are shore days on the low coast, one day goes onto the high plateau above the valley, one is a short day built around wells and a ruined church, and the rest are made up on the morning by the guide from what the ground is doing. Lunch is carried. There is no minibus following you and no fixed lunch stop, so if weather turns the day shortens rather than stops. Group size runs from four to twelve.
Inside the figure and outside it, in practice
From $1,680 per person, two sharing a double room, holds seven nights in a family run guesthouse, breakfast every morning, five evening meals, a guide on all seven walking days, and the local transport used inside the week. Outside the figure: getting to Ireland, which is your own booking, since this office arranges no air or sea travel and holds a contract with no carrier; the crossing out to the islands, which the operating company can put in on the day at its own charge; drinks; and travel insurance, which this office neither sells nor advises on. Billing comes from whichever firm runs that week, on its own paper and its own terms, and this end is settled with later. No money and no card details reach this office at any point.
Nights
7
From
$1,680 per person, two sharing
When it runs
May and June, then September
Spread between the two versions
Very wide
What the figure holds
Rooms for the nights stated, the guided days set out on this page, admissions belonging to those days, and whatever the running company charges for its own part.
What it leaves out
Reaching the country and leaving it again, any meal not listed above, anything personal, and anything agreed later.
Who invoices you
The company that runs the week, in its own name.
Asked before anybody commits
Which of the two weeks will I actually get?
The office does not know and will not guess. It keeps no record of how each week turned out, it has no weather statistic it can name a source for, and any number it invented would be a sales device rather than information. Both versions are printed at the same size for that reason. Read the wide spread on this one as the real warning it is.
Can you book my flights to Ireland?
No. This office arranges no travel by air and no travel by sea, and holds a contract with no carrier, so the journey to and from Ireland is entirely your own booking. Tell the office your arrival day when you send the request and the ground week will be built around it. The guesthouse is roughly ninety minutes by road from the nearest airport.
What happens if it rains all week?
The week runs. Nothing is refunded for weather, by this office or by the company on the ground, and no version of this page has ever suggested otherwise. What changes is the route: pavement days move to lanes and green roads, the coast section turns inland, and the guide shortens rather than cancels. You pay $1,680 either way. That is the whole point of printing two weeks.
Finish the sentence and a week gets reserved
Whatever the hour, what you send lands here and is read by a person, who replies inside one working day. Sending it binds you to nothing, and no sum is ever taken at this end.
