Minister for Agriculture Michael Creed was among the hundreds of day-trippers who joined the Carrucan family of Fanore, Co Clare, and the Burrenbeo Trust to move 30 spring-calving sucklers from their lowland pasture to Burren winterage last Sunday.

Farmer Patsy Carrucan explained to the assembled crowd that the winterage tradition spanned beyond living memory: “If you notice where some of the cows are grazing, they’re really old field boundaries. They were surveyed some years ago and they were discovered to be between 5,000 and 6,000 years old, so there was a farm system here with field boundaries, the same as the Céide fields.”