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DoChara's Ireland Blog
Random Writings about Ireland and the Irish
Wednesday
July 6 2005
Wild, elemental, exhilarating and ....... indoors?
Have you been to the Cliffs of Moher? If you live in or have ever visited Ireland the answer is probably yes, more than 750,000 people a year visit them. On a sunny day there is nowhere more lovely and the views out to sea and over the Aran Islands to the hills of Connemara are glorious. In the wind it is a truly exhilarating experience to climb the steep steps to the top, leaning into an Atlantic gale.
No wonder people flock there.
Now, when you were there, did you understand it? No, really, that's a serious question.
You see work has started on an interpretive centre to be built at the site at a cost of €28 million Euro. That's almost £19 million or more than $33 million. It'll probably cost a lot more, as these things have a habit of doing. To "interpret" the cliffs.
At the moment when you arrive, you park your car and proceed up a pathway, then a series of stone steps to the top of the cliffs. There is a coffee shop/gift shop over to your right if you care to go in but in my experience not that many people do. Three quarters of a million people a year have found this satisfactory, most people who visit wax lyrical about the place.
Why do I think this is all about to change? I have a horrible feeling you will now be obliged to enter and exit via the Interpretive Centre where you will be carefully channelled though a series of spops selling the usual stuff available already in a hundred other such places.
But here is the best bit. The centre will include a "multimedia presentation to enable visitors to enjoy the cliffs experience indoors". Oh please! It's one thing to watch a TV show about a natural phenomenon half a world away, but the cliffs are right there. Outside the door. And they will have a multimedia presentation showing them to you?
There are places that need interpretive centres - Ceide Fields and Newgrange spring immediately to mind - because they have complex histories and the significance of what you see is not immediately apparent. But these are cliffs.
It is of course really a means of extracting money from visitors. I wish them well (ok, only sort of) and I really, really hope it does not ruin the place completely but this is to my mind a travesty and a glaring symptom of the greedy grasping nation we are becoming. It isn't attractive.
Anyway, until early 2007 you are reasonably safe, though I suppose the place will be a huge building site, so get on down there as fast as you can, it'll never be the same again.
Comments on "Wild, elemental, exhilarating and ....... indoors?"
19 July 2005
heh enjoyed this post greatly.
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