Take a stalk on the wild side
The sound of a cuckoo wakes me in the morning after a night in a rain-battered tent on a hillside overlooking the Atlantic Ocean. It is a bird that is all too rarely heard these days and its call comes from a sprawling hazel forest close to the Burren in Co Clare. It is an area more famous for its rock-blistered limestone landscape, which despite its apparent barrenness is one of Ireland’s most diverse areas for flora. I have pitched my tent in a place where herbalist and forager Cearbhúil Ní Fhionnghusa has gone back to nature, growing organic vegetables and harvesting the rich resources that grow at our feet and which most people pass by. Cearbhúil walks me through her 3.5 acres of Burren land that lies outside Lisdoonvarna and from its highest point overlooks the Atlantic Ocean, the Twelve Ben mountains in Connemara, the Aran Islands and the Cliffs of Moher. Pointing to the herbs and healing plants we come across, she explains their properties and uses. “The purple flower of v...