Tim Robinson has done it again. He has just issued a revised edition of his excellent Burren map of 1977, and it is on a larger scale - two inches to the mile - and contains many archaeological and historical additions as well as bringing the population and new buildings figures up to date. Published, of course, by Folding Landscapes of Roundstone, Galway, and widely distributed. It costs £5 and comes in a neat plastic see-through envelope. In the more than 20 years since the original publication, the number of houses has increased by almost 45 per cent. Around New Quay and in Ballyvaughan it has doubled, much of the increase is tourist-related, including some small estates of holiday homes. Guesthouses, B and Bs are so numerous that he can't name them on the map. Hotels are there. As he went to press the future of the Burren National Park's visitor centre at Gortlecka (Mullaghmore) was still in the balance, he writes. Fascinatingly, he has added many archaeological sites. These include 13 newly identified neolithic tombs, numerous fulachta fia, a cluster of hut sites on Turlough Hill, described as remarkable, cairns, several holy wells and more. He has added 33 extra caves and generously gives names to the many who have helped him in all this, and, indeed, thanks the many informative and hospitable people who have helped him on his road.
The Burren he describes as "a hundred and fifty square miles of paradoxes. Its austere beauty is the result of millennia of abuse, its barreness nurtures a worldfamous flora. Limestone, the most humane of rocks, is the key". This stone is vulnerable even to the mild acid of rainwater. As a result, the Burren is "being returned to the sea at a rate of half a centimetre a century." Tim Robinson describes the area as a "vast memorial to bygone cultures". Everyone knows of the portal tomb at Poulabrone, used between 3800 and 3200 BC, and he encapsulates in a few hundred words the essence of this wonder. Well, he is more selective in his words, "one of the world's most precious and delicate terrains". Since his original map of 1977, we have lost a holy well, a children's burial ground, a boulder that was a saint's chair and other precious items - victims, it may be, of what he calls agri-vandalism. He writes that this map is his contribution to helping maintain and preserve the Burren. A worthy and fascinating contribution for which we must be thankful.