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 A panoramic view of the north-western border of a spectacular tableland region, where the abrupt, prow-like profile of Ben Bulben forms its edge. Table mountain landscape dominates an area not far short of 1,000 square miles in counties Sligo, Leitrim and Mayo. In it flat beds of Carboniferous  Limestone, tilted very gently eastwards, have been dissected by deep-cut valleys into a series of separate, flat-topped plateaux. Because of the tilt, the limestone formation gives way eastwards to overlying sandstones, but the general morphological aspect of the plateau landscape is similar in each case. Vertical fractures (joints) control the upright cliff faces, skirted lower down by a more gently-sloping scree of boulders which have fallen away in the course of time. The rock formations and their disposition are as in the Moher region of Co. Clare, and the landscape which developed has much in common with the latter.
The limestone cliff habitat has many unusual calcicole plants and the plateau above has some notable arctic relics, probably survivals of the tundra vegetation that first colonised the land after the ice-sheets disappeared 10,000 years ago: alpine saxifrage, mountain aven and others. Our view faces southwards from the N15 across gently undulating lowland in glacial deposits. Its minor rises are reclaimed farmland with scattered homesteads, each in its shelter belt of trees, while bog fills the ill-drained depressions among them. |
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