The Trailblazer

For a country so rich in wild and beautiful landscapes, walking in Ireland can be agonisingly restricted. The general public has no legal right of access to the countryside, except for a right to roam in designated National Parks – and even the legality of that is vague and hard to trace. All land is privately owned and every single walking trail is established by permission of the landowner, which means access can be withdrawn at any time. There are only 44 established walking routes in the whole of the Republic of Ireland, which amount to 3000km of paths – a meagre figure when compared with England and Wales’ 225,000km of Public Rights of Way.

All that makes the Wicklow Way particularly precious: a rare free pass into Ireland’s gorgeousness. Pioneering too: the trail was the very first of Ireland’s trails to be established, opening to the public in 1980. It was the brainchild of JB Malone, a military cartographer and civil servant, who developed a love of hillwalking as a teenager in the 1930s. After acquiring a detailed knowledge of Wicklow’s walking routes, he had the idea for a public trail through the mountains in 1942 and started actively campaigning for it in 1966. Alongside writing public-facing articles for the Irish Herald, he negotiated and secured rights of way with landowners until he finally achieved his goal. Forty-two years on, and his hard-won vision still paves the way for miles and miles of exhilaration.

For more information on Ireland’s access laws, visit Ordnance Survey Ireland (osi.ie) and the Keep Ireland Open campaign (keepirelandopen.org).