Ailwee Cave & Paulnabrone Dolmen, Ireland

We drove to Paulnabrone Dolmen which is an ancient burial site of ancestral Irish peoples.  It is in the Burrens and there are slabs of rock used to build the memorial that are so large it's hard to imagine that ancient people 6000 + years ago could somehow carve and lift these slabs of rock from the Burren.

The burial site contains 30 people of different millennia some were put in the burial site in different millennia.  There were even baby bones found in the tomb.

I have never seen Stonehenge but I've seen many pictures and this was very reminiscent of Stonehenge as to how these rocks were maneuvered or lifted and put in place is anyone's guess.

Apparently, this is the best ancestral burial site in all of Ireland.  Coincidentally there are more of these in Ireland if you wish to visit them.

There is free parking at the site and it is completely free to visit.  You can walk around and walk on different trails.  There are no bathrooms available at this site.

I love the construction of Irish Rock Walls and they continue to stand for hundreds of years which is truly unbelievable.  This wall surrounded Paulnabrone Dolmen.

More Burren landscape in the upper half of this photo to the left.

We have visited numerous caves in our travels worldwide and Aillwee cave looked interesting.  It is located in the Burrens and throughout the Burrens there are cave systems that have been discovered. This cave was discovered in the 1960s.  Rumour has it that a man and a dog were walking in the Burrens and the dog disappeared, he was chasing a rabbit and it led the man to the cave.  He later came back with a candle and walked into the cave. 

 

You can not miss the turn to Aillwee Castle because there is a lovely ruin of a beautiful old fortified castle where you have to make your turn.

When you pay your entrance fee to the cave it includes a 45-minute tour of the cave.  The Museum has posters to read and there is a Farm store which sells the area's cheeses and crafts.  It also includes a Bird of Prey show which takes 35 minutes and personally, I was not excited about this.  I learned some interesting things about vultures though.  Vultures as we know are hideous-looking creatures but we had one up close and his name was Dyson (he was named after the vacuum cleaner) actually they are kind of cute.  They are very important to the ecosystem which I did not understand.  Dyson is a great name for this particular vulture because that's what they do, Hoover up all the stuff that you don't want to see or look at.  

In India, 99 percent of the vultures have been killed because they eat all the dead polluted carcasses. These carcasses have a certain chemical in them due to India being very polluted. It has practically killed off the vultures in India and they are going extinct there, which throws off the ecosystem.  If you don't have animal vacuum cleaners then there is more spread of diseases and germs and in India that is a very bad thing.

The reason why vultures are so ugly is because they do not have head feathers. The reason for this is their head is always neck deep in blood and gore and stink and this way the blood just dries and flakes off their head.   This doesn't cause any sort of disease or germs to the vulture.

Their beaks and talons are not strong enough to tear open a carcass of an elephant or rhinoceros.   This species of vulture actually enters the animal through orifices of the carcass, gross I know.  There are other species of vultures that are strong enough to do that but not Dyson.

The natural acid in the vulture's stomach allows them to eat almost anything, so a 10-day-old rhinoceros ass carcass is not going to affect his tummy.

In African nations, vultures have been targeted by poachers, because they circle in the sky over a dead carcass.  This alerts game wardens and this gives them information as to where the poachers are located.  The vultures have been purposely poisoned and killed off in many African nations.

The Hawks in the show were also quite interesting.  The Bird of Prey trainers were funny and informational and we did this show before we went into the cave. 

Aillwee Cave was interesting.  It was a nice leisurely 45 minutes underground and we learned again about stalactites and stalagmites and other interesting facts.  

The entrance to Aillwee cave.

You can see the white phallic-like stalagmite reaching for the ceiling of the cave.  This little guy was about 18 inches high and thousands of years old.

There was a lovely waterfall in the cave that when it rains becomes a raging waterfall.

 

Here are some stalactites clinging tightly to the ceiling and these guys were estimated to be 50 thousand years old due to their size.

There are bats in this cave and this particular species is on the endangered list.  There were 40 when the government took control of the cave and started managing it and now there are over a hundred.  They are the size of a thumb.  Surprisingly their wing span was up to 12 inches.

The views of the Burren are jade green plots of Irish land.   The views from where the cave entrance are glorious.