'The Pathless Land: Finding A Way Across Ireland'
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Why does Tim Hannigan find Ireland’s countryside access so puzzling?
I want now though to move on to a conversation that we always seem to be starting but never quite finishing. Getting Irish people access to the countryside on a par with what everybody else in Europe enjoys. Tim Hannigan is a Cornish-born travel writer who for ten years has made East Galway his home, so he knows us and our eccentricities pretty well by now. But as somebody who grew up with a right to Roam the countryside, the thing about living in Ireland that he can't get his head around is the comparatively limited access that we settle for here. So he set himself the challenge of walking through Ireland's heartlands from one side of the island to the other without trespassing to see how much of the journey could be completed off-road, and to talk to us about our attitudes to the idea of a right to roam.
The book of his journey, The Pathless Land, Finding a Way Across Ireland, it's a brilliant read, full of history, local curiosity. And characters. I met him in East Galway for a bit of a leg stretch on Sleeve Ochty. So where have you brought me?
So we're uh we're in the age of Snioski, which they're not mountainous, they're
high and hilly. Tell me, will you please about How much of the country you had the run of growing up in
Cornwall. We have this huge network of public footpaths that have been legally enshrined, legally protected since the mid-20th century, running right left and centre all the way across that landscape. The Southwest Coast Path, which is one of the longest long-distance trails in Europe, actually was three fields away from my home place. So you you could get onto that and turn right or left and walk for literally hundreds of kilometers. So there was a real sense of the countryside being
How did Cornwall’s public footpath network shape Tim’s expectations for Ireland?
Open. And then you arrive in Ireland and you experience this enormous culture shock when you see this tribe of people in high viz vests tramping around on the hard shoulders of ringroads and you were completely perplexed by what it was they were doing.
It's the most can confusing spectacle. If you come from a place which is not just Cornwall, it would be most other places in Europe where there are places to walk other than the edge of the ring road. It makes no sense. Even if you're just out for brisk exercise, you you would have a uh some kind of trail on the edge of town wherever you were in Europe, but not here. So it's just a striking distance and I guess it was the first alarm bell when I arrived. Right. It's not that there was nowhere to walk, there's places like this, but you typically have to get in a car and drive.
Was it always like this, or did Irish people have the use of paths and footpaths all over the country before the 20th
century? So, this this is one of the revelatory discoveries for me. Because I was struck by this. Surely, surely it didn't used to be like this. Surely it couldn't always have been like this. And you'd ask people and you'd get different answers. Some people would say, well, it was actually the English landlords who stopped people walking across the land. Turns out that's not true at all. Uh very well recorded. On the old maps, which are freely available in digital archives, there is a massive Network of footpaths running across the fieldscape of Ireland, entirely comparable to what you'd find in Wales or England today.
What historical evidence shows Ireland once had an extensive footpath system?
Thousands upon thousands of miles of footpaths. They're recorded at their most dense in the second major ordnance survey in the 19 in the 1880s, but they're still there in the last six-inch ordnance survey, which was published in the 1940s. So we're post-independence. There are still footpaths marked in the fields. And in the prose and the poetry of the time as well. Yes, I mean this is a fascinating thing. If you look at 19th-century novels, take a digitised version of pretty much any 19th-century novel of Ireland and search style or footpath, and you'll find references to people going to mass or going to visit or going to the pub. Cross the fields, crossing styles, crossing the wall via a style. So they were here.
It's not that Ireland never had them, it's not that this is somehow alien to Ireland, the idea of moving across the landscape on public footpaths, it's that we've lost them and lost them
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Chapters
8 chapters
1
Why does Tim Hannigan find Ireland’s countryside access so puzzling?
0:00–1:56
2
How did Cornwall’s public footpath network shape Tim’s expectations for Ireland?
1:56–3:24
3
What historical evidence shows Ireland once had an extensive footpath system?
3:24–5:05
4
Why did Irish land‑ownership attitudes become defensive after the 20th‑century land reforms?
5:05–6:56
5
How does the lack of statutory access affect everyday Irish attitudes toward walkers?
6:56–8:32
6
What challenges did Tim encounter when trying to walk across Ireland without using roads?
8:32–10:26
7
Could expanding public footpaths improve Irish people’s connection to the land?
10:26–12:23
8
What are the controversies around state‑led greenways and compulsory purchase orders?
12:23–14:31
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