"The Irish countryside offers tremendous opportunities for walking and hiking. Magnificent scenery with a diversity of landscape and physical features all contribute to an excellent walking landscape........" from A Guide for Planning and Developing Waymarked Walking Trails in Ireland.
Ireland as a walking destination
According to the Central Statistics Office in Ireland, Hiking/Hillwalking was by far the most popular activity for visitors to Ireland in 2008 with the numbers engaging in this activity doubling to 517,000 between 2004 and 2008.
This increase could be partly due to the efforts of various initiatives to promote Ireland as a walking destination over the last few years, in conjunction with the development of a number of long distance trails and loop walks by the National Waymarked Ways of Ireland.
Many of these walks can be found in the more wilder and remote parts of Ireland's Mid West Region, where the walker can truly enjoy that sense of "getting away from it all" when taking in the air in one of the less populated parts of Ireland.
Aims of this website
To discover and explore the best walks which remain off road.
As quite a number of the trails - especially the long distance trails in the Mid West Region are for their greater part on tarmac road surfaces, it is my intention as someone who considers roads are much better cycled or driven on, to explore and discover walks which for their greater part remain off road.
Because of this, not all the walks on this website will be found amongst National Waymarked Ways of Ireland publications.
About the walks
Information provided on these walks will include directions on how to get there, where to park and a general description of the walk. Each walk also includes a route map and images of scenes and points of interest along each trail.
News
- You can now follow me on Twitter Follow @WalkIreland
- Latest Walk: Mooghaun Loop Walk - New Format using Google Maps....
This delightful walk at Mooghaun in Mid Clare explores fully the largest Bronze Age hillfort in the county. The trail is well maintained by the Parks and Wildlife Service of Ireland, and information boards keep the walker well informed throughout. - Coming soon - mobile version of this site using Google Maps for all the walks...