If you want a walk in the great outdoors but in a place surrounded by rich history dating back thousands of years, then you need to go no further than just across the Border beyond Blacklion in Co. Cavan.

The Cavan Burren Park has undergone a substantial refurbishment that makes the walking experience much more accessible and improves the tremendous views.

Some visitors to this area over the years however, say it is not quite the same Burren they remember from decades ago with its almost mysterious shadowy areas as it was heavily forested.

Many of the forested trees have now been harvested and a new innovative interpretative centre has been built with adequate car park to bring more people into the area.

In fact the project which was officially opened in 2014 is been so successfully done, that Coilte, the forest service in the Republic, along with Cavan County Council and Killinagh Community Council, were recently awarded joint recipients of the RDS Community Woodlands Award.

Descsribed as a karst or eroded limestone landscape, the Cavan Burren is Ireland’s prehistoric park covering an area of 124 hectares of forest, featuring historical monuments, megalithic tombs (some older then the pyramids), hut sites, prehistoric rock art and echoes of a 350 million-year-old dead sea.

Now thanks to 4.5km of walking trails, Cavan Burren Park is part of, and a gateway to, the wider UNESCO designated ‘Marble Arch Caves Global Geopark.’ At the official opening in 2014, by the then Minister for Environment, Community and Local Government, Phil Hogan who is now the EU Farm Commissioner, the site was recognised for its rich archaelological heritage containing over 80 monuments, ancient hut sites and field systems that survive from prehistoric times.

In fact it is a prime example of a cross-border initiative made possible through over €900,000 in funding from the Border Uplands project which is supported by the European Union’s Interreg IVA Programme, managed by the Special EU Programme Body and delivered by the Irish Central Border Area Network (ICBAN); project partners include Cavan County Council, Fermanagh District Council, Leitrim County Council and Sligo County Council.

Joining Fermanagh Ramblers on a walk in the Park, I quickly discovered some of this wonderful landscape, which has been around for such a long time.

Burren is in every respect a “relict” landscape. Its funereal monuments, habitation sites and fields survive from prehistoric times. Its glacial erratics survive from the last ice age while its dry valley and associated doline bear testimony to a pre-glacial river and sink. The fossils embedded in its limestone are the coral of a tropical sea of 350 million years ago. The area is used as a unique educational resource, showing not only the history of human settlement from the tombs of the early Neolithic settlers to the limekilns and animal shelters of the 19th century farmers but in addition to this the evolution of a landscape from its formation in a tropical sea south of the Equator, through the various ice ages to the present.

“It is a palimpsest of history with layer upon layer of both human and natural history visible on its karstic features,” as someone described it.

Many behind its recent refurbishment indicated how the Burren’s geographical location, in addition to the political situation in Northern Ireland probably contributed to a general lack of knowledge and appreciation of the Burren archaeological sites during the latter part of the 20th During this time the maturing coniferous forest as many frequent walkers would recall, made access to the monuments extremely difficult, hiding from the general public the array of human and natural history.

Some of these features are unique in Ireland such as the Prototype tombs which are modified glacial erratics which have been used for funereal purposes.

This is a sacred place and many of the landmarks are exposed and signposted from the new walking trails.

Two men who have extensively surveyed the area were Gaby Burns and Jim Nolan, from Enniskillen. They made interesting discoveries and produced a booklet on it and copies are available.