Winding through the west

You could be admiring the Burren for a long time, gleaning information every time you visit, but if you really want the low-down, get a guide. There is nothing to beat information personally imparted, and if Maryangela Keane is imparting it, so much the better.

We met in Ballyvaughan, in Co Clare, and headed west past Black Head, from where there are fine views over the Atlantic and to the Aran Islands. Soon we were standing on the great limestones that make up the ancient seabed of the Burren, laid down some 350 million years ago.

"Water is the dynamic of limestone," explains Keane, a local guide. "It both creates and destroys it." So we were told of this creative/destructive process, the period of glaciation, the cracking of the bedrock.

But it isn't as if it's bare. This is Europe's greatest rock garden, the whole thing a wonder of natural beauty. Not only that, but, as Keane says, "you can read history on the face of the Burren as you would in a book."

Every race that came to Ireland came here, and some of its walls date back to monastic times. As our guide reminds us, "landscape is a medallion struck in the image of its people," and nowhere is that more true than in the Burren.

Now that we have learned a few things, and will never again speak of the Burren's "big boulders" but of its "glacial erratics", it is time to move on.

We shouldn't have set out from here at all, of course. This trip is meant to begin at the Cliffs of Moher and end in Westport, a route hailed by the Automobile Association magazine as one of the world's 10 great drives.

So, after refreshment in the pretty seaside Tea Rooms in Ballyvaughan, it's back out the coast road, through Murroogh, Fanore and the traditional-music stronghold of Doolin, to check out the Cliffs of Moher. Sure enough, they are still there, and refusing to be any less impressive.

You could cut back from here through Lisdoonvarna, but it's just as interesting to keep to the coast and watch whatever is going down on Galway Bay: usually rain, although today it's holding off.

We coast on to Kinvara, where base camp is the Merriman Hotel - possessor of the "biggest thatched roof in Ireland". It has a modern bar, M'Asal Beag Dubh, where you can drink through the medium of Irish, with the ghost of Pβdraic ╙ Conaire's donkey for company. Entertainment for the night is, appropriately, provided by the Limestone Cowboys.

We have dawdled away more than half the next day in the Kinvara environs before making the short skip to Galway. After Oranmore, the whole world seems to be heading to the city, for it is arts-festival time, and it may also be that some of the horsey crowd were getting there early for the races.

With Clifden as the day's destination, we take the roundabout coast road. This has all the pleasures of Barna, Spiddal, Inveran and Rossaveel, where you can catch a ferry to the Aran Islands. There isn't time for that, but we are reminded of Michael Longley's beautiful poem Leaving Inishmore, and how "rain and sunlight and the boat between them / shifted whole hillsides through the afternoon . . . "

Some other day we will revisit "the island awash in wave and anthem", despite many reports we have heard that Inishmore is killing the golden goose of tourism.

Now we have other fish to fry. We have travelled on through Rosmuck and Kilkieran. It is well into evening, and if we stay on the coast road we will be lucky to get a late-night takeaway in Clifden, never mind dinner.

So we skip Roundstone until tomorrow and cut back to the main road. In no time at all we are in the perfect Connemara oasis of the Rock Glen Hotel, just outside Clifden.

This beautifully restored shooting lodge has two attentive hosts, John and Evangeline Roche, and two small cuddly dogs who have the air of being the beneficial owners of the place. The Rock Glen has official "romantic hotel" status with the AA - its setting alone, with its views of the Twelve Bens, deserves it - and its restaurant is superb. It would be nice to keep all this secret, but the secret is getting out anyway, because the place was packed.

Next day, we picked up on the road not taken; that is, the coastal run back to Roundstone. This village seems to throb with a life of its own - though perhaps partly with the beat of the bodhrβns turned out in style (and some quantity) at Malachy Kearns's music centre.

From Clifden it is no distance to the stunningly situated Kylemore Abbey.

The trouble with this area is that there are so many byroads calling out to be visited. You could take a detour to the popular holiday area of Cleggan or visit the remote and beautiful Renvyle peninsula.

We moved on to Leenane for our date with the Connemara Lady, an impressive modern catamaran offering cruises on "Ireland's only fjord", Killary Harbour. This is a pleasant and educational trip - £11 for adults; "no seasickness: money-back guarantee" - which is sold as the ultimate experience on a rainy day in Connemara. It's even more pleasant when the sun shines, as it did.

Leenane is tiny, but it still boasts a well-restored hotel, a fine restaurant and a cultural centre that focuses on the Connemara tradition of hill sheep farming - "visitors are free to mingle with the flock, try to identify the different breeds or take home a photograph of a neolithic sheep."

The road from Leenane to Westport is noted for its scenic beauty, but it's just as interesting to travel inland, firstly along the Mayo coast of "the Killary", then through the wild and beautiful Delphi Valley. Then it's on to Louisburgh, and before we know it we are in Westport, the only planned town in Ireland. Our base is the excellent Knockranny Lodge guest house.

Westport is cool, and it has mostly avoided kitsch. It has Matt Molloys and a few other good pubs. It has good restaurants such as Quay Cottage and the Lemon Peel, and it retains a proper sense of itself. The tourist office has a fine audio-visual display on the town's history.

We wander round Westport a bit dazed, wondering again about Ireland and where it might be going. In McLoughlins, of Shop Street, we find some kind of an answer: this place must have one of the biggest collections of Ireland-related literature anywhere. There are books on Irish legends, myths and illuminated letters. There is The Very Little Leprechaun Book. There are Irish Toasts, A Little Bit of Ireland, books of Celtic saints, sayings and spirituality, books of Irish surnames and of Irish cookery. There is A History Of Sex And Morals in Ireland - 80 pages; fair enough - and there is even The Little Book Of Irish Grannies' Remedies. Varicose ulcers? "Take a warm plaster of cow dung . . . "

Limestone probably plays a part somewhere, too, which is where we came in.