They're perfectly pleasant middle-of-the-range cliffs, conveniently near to the road. But there's not all that much a visitor can do with cliff, except look at it.

I take it for granted that they'd never have become famous but that they were the ideal distance from Lahinch for Victorian ladies to be driven out to be impressed by them while the gentlemen played golf, at a time when ladies in particular were readily impressed by natural phenomena . . . views, waterfalls, peaks, volcanoes, cliffs etc.

Teas, of course, were served, but at that time, the cliffs themselves were the point of the exercise. Their location is still the secret of their importance . . . they're conveniently placed midway on the Kerry/Galway loop and they're near villages like Doolin and Lisdoonvarna that are well able to handle visitors. But the bar has been raised when it comes to being impressed;

and tourism is a mass activity now, not the property of an elite, and there are hordes of visitors where there used to be a few; and most people do not, nowadays, think enough of the Creator's way with cliffs to be willing to get wet or even dishevelled while admiring them.

Something had to be done to give them a contemporary spin. And what was done was to shift the emphasis of a visit to the cliffs from the cliffs themselves to the experience of visiting the cliffs.

Inside the visitor is where whatever is going to happen will happen. They are still the Cliffs of Moher but what you pay for is the 'Cliffs of Moher New Visitor Experience'. The parking, the walkways, the little beehive hut things where you get tickets, the cafe, the homemade beef lasagna, the gifts in the shop, the toilets, the impenetrable signage, above all the central building where most of these things are housed . . . or hilled, since it is inset in rising ground . . . are as much part of the deal as the sea lapping away at the steep edge of the land.

The underfield building is a construction tour de force and as respectful of its ambiance as any building could be. Its every detail seems considered and high quality, even the mix of stone, tile and brick, of modern wall and old wall. The staff who run the various things inside it couldn't be more charming. Those are the highlights.

But the centre of the building is wasted on a confused exhibition, reminiscent of a learning centre in a Scandinavian library, which touches on as many facts as anyone could possibly want to know about the cliffs but avoids the perennially interesting thing, the lives of the people. Who made the decision that the information offered should be so bland and cultureless? And Clareless? Human beings have made specific types of living from the poor land all around the cliffs and . . . in awful circumstances . . . from the cliffs. They've raised children who walked to schools, they've worshipped and fought over land and voted and served the landords and given in helplessly to emigration and known scandals and miracles and jokes and feuds and got drunk and helped each other and taken sides in national events. Two tiny displays are all there is that even refers to this rich and poignant history. Why is it that in this and many another visitor centres in Ireland, the planners seem either to know no social history or to be ashamed of it?

To my great surprise, it is the cliffs themselves which are the glory of the 'Experience'. In a rare if invisible gesture, I took my hat off to the planners as I walked along the wide, flagstone path above the ocean, stopping every so often in one of the little amphitheatres where people can choose to have a rest. The old path was a harried and uneasy experience; this one is genial. This one allows a large number of people access in comfort to the mystery of the way the physical world is made, if they care to contemplate it. Of course it is sanitised, compared to the simple Victorian set-up it replaces. Even the buskers, deployed here and there along the path, are tasteful . . . God be with the days when Margaret Barry fell out of the nearest pub and belted a song out for the money to go back in. But it is a beautiful path and the security people are tactful and the visitor is close all the time to authentic things . . . fields, old walls, old flagstones.

The cliffs just stand there, untouched.

Their solidity is matched by the fine new plant . . . the underground building, and the path. I just hope the kids screw up all the interactive tat in the exhibition very soon so that what might be in that space can be equally well imagined.