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Joe Steinbring

The Burren

Green pasture behind a stone wall, below a long, bare limestone hill under dark clouds.
The bare limestone hills of the Burren, above green pasture.2023 · Photograph by Joe Steinbring
Static offline map showing The Burren in Ireland with a location pin.

The Burren is the limestone country along the south side of Galway Bay, in the northwest of County Clare, where the bedrock lies bare on the surface in great gray terraces and pavements. The blocks of the pavement are called clints and the cracks between them grikes, worn open by rainwater dissolving the stone, and small plants grow in the shelter of the cracks. My Mom and I crossed it on the first day of our Wild Atlantic Way tour in May 2023, on the road west from Kinvara, between stone-walled pastures below bare hills, and then stopped on the coast road between Doolin and Fanore to walk out across the pavement to the low cliffs over the Atlantic.

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  • Grass and gray limestone ledges running out to the sea, with a headland beyond.

    Limestone running down to the Atlantic.

    2023 · Photograph by Joe Steinbring

  • A wide sheet of cracked limestone pavement with grass in the joints, running toward the sea.

    Clints and grikes: the limestone pavement.

    2023 · Photograph by Joe Steinbring

  • A clump of pink sea pinks and small white flowers growing from a crack in gray limestone.

    Sea pinks growing out of the rock.

    2023 · Photograph by Joe Steinbring

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