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Cliffs of Moher - County Clare

Cliff of Moher

A few others seem to know about this place!

The Cliffs of Moher are located at the south-western edge of the Burren region in County Clare. They rise 120 metres (390 ft) above the Atlantic Ocean at Hag's Head and reach their maximum height of 214 metres (702 ft) just north of O'Brien's Tower, eight kilometres to the north. A round stone tower is near the midpoint of the cliffs, the tower was built in 1835 by Sir Cornelius O'Brien. From the cliffs and from atop the tower, visitors can see the Aran Islands in Galway Bay, the Maumturks and the Twelve Pins mountain ranges to the north in County Galway and Loop Head to the south. The cliffs rank amongst the top visited tourist sites in Ireland and receive almost one million visitors a year.

About Sir Cornelius O'Brien....

The Burrens

Nestling just off Galway Bay, on the western Atlantic coast of Ireland, are over 259 square kilometres of dramatic limestone karst landscape known as the Burren.

This is a region which was largely sculpted over the last two million years by glaciers, through the exposure and submergence of its landscape to ice, ocean and plate movements of the earth.

The  distinctive limestone terraces and pavements of this region formed over the millennia like steps of stairs as glacial action plucked layers of stone from the hillsides. These terraces are made up of thick horizontal limestone layers or beds which were first laid down in a tropical sea floor about 335 million years ago, during the Carboniferous period.

The trademark shattered and smooth pavements of the Burren are seedbed habitats for the amazingly diverse array of plants and wildflowers. Here alpine and arctic plants grow side by side with Mediterranean species. Over 70% of Ireland’s 900 native plant species are found here.