Things to do
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Cliffs of Moher
Fourteen kilometres of shale and sandstone cliff rising to two hundred and fourteen metres at Knockardakin, with O'Brien's Tower of 1835 near the highest point and puffins on Goat Island from April to July. The visitor centre car park is ticketed and timed, and the free approach is the coastal path from Doolin or Liscannor.
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Poulnabrone Dolmen
A portal tomb on bare limestone pavement in the middle of the Burren, built about 3800 BC, where the remains of at least thirty-three people were found under the capstone. It stands a hundred metres from the road with a boardwalk to it.
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Aillwee Cave
A cave running a kilometre into the hill above Ballyvaughan with a frozen waterfall chamber and the hibernation hollows of brown bears, which have been extinct in Ireland for thousands of years. A birds of prey centre works from the same site.
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Burren National Park
Fifteen square kilometres of limestone pavement, turlough and hazel scrub, the smallest of the national parks, where spring gentian and Mediterranean orchid grow within a metre of each other. There is no visitor centre in the park itself and the trailheads are at Mullaghmore.
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Corcomroe Abbey
A Cistercian abbey of about 1195 in a fold of the northern Burren, roofless but with unusually fine carved capitals of local plants, and the tomb effigy of a king of Thomond in the chancel. It stands alone in a valley off the Bell Harbour road.
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Doolin Cave
A show cave holding a free-hanging stalactite of over seven metres, the longest free-hanging stalactite in Europe, found by two English cavers in 1952. The descent is a hundred and twenty-five steps and the tour is guided and timed.
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Fanore Beach
A sandy strand backed by a large dune system on the Black Head road, with a reliable beach break that the Clare surf schools use. The limestone terraces of the Burren run down almost to the sand behind it.
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Gregans Castle Hotel
A Georgian house under Corkscrew Hill looking over the Burren to Galway Bay, with no televisions in the rooms and a dining room that has held a reputation for thirty years. Tolkien stayed here and the landscape is claimed as a source for Mordor.