Anything above ground battered by the relentless winds of the stormy day, coated in that salty sea spray.
But for those of us who have been visitors, and those of us in the modern age able to retreat to homes warmed by easy to light central heating, insulated from the winds with triple glazing, storing foods bought in the supermarket in the freezer, heated for dinner in the oven - it's a beautiful scene for us.
For those who lived here in centuries and millennia past toiling in the fields and sheltered by a small fire of natural materials harvested by hand, this was a tough place in which to live.
Join Panoramic Ireland, that's me, for a photography workshop out here in the wilds of the west of Ireland starting from €400 for a full day of one-to-one photographic tuition from a professional Irish travel photographer.
