Today we took a group trip to a region known as the Burren. It is in County Clare, which is the County below Galway. It is made up of limestone rock and is very barren. The Burren is filled with famine cottages and famine walls. The famine walls were built during the late 1840's, when the potato famine happened in Ireland. During the famine, Ireland was under British rule. The potato blight killed 3/4 of the potato crop and the Irish people had nothing to eat. All of the food that was grown in Ireland was given to the British landowners or shipped to England. The Irish begged and begged for food, and the British rulers said they would have to work for their food. They made the Irish build pointless walls of rock up steep mountains in return for a tiny portion of food. During the famine, the population in Ireland went from 8 million to 3 million. Okay, I'm done sounding like a history text book, but I figured I would share some of the information I have learned while traveling.
After driving through the Burren, we arrived at the Cliffs of Moher. It is one of the most heavily visited sights in all of Ireland and the steepest cliffs in all of Europe. There is a fort on top of one of the cliffs called O'Brien's fort (you can see it in my pictures). You can walk on top of the cliffs, even though there are signs saying not too. It was pretty scary being on top of these cliffs but beautiful at the same time. My pictures show some of the stops we made along the way at the Burren, Dunguaire Castle, and then the Cliffs. Its obvious which ones are the cliffs...
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