Catching up with some books while gaining ideas for Irish outdoor excursions
Published on 7th February 2026 
Estimated Reading Time: 5 minutesAs last year came to an end, I perused a few books that may interest those seeking hiking inspiration for a trip to or around Ireland. In the last few years, a number of easy-to-read books have emerged. Given that there are few other ways of offline perusal of prospects following the demise of Walking World Ireland and stillborn start of Mountain World Ireland, these have their uses.
Keeping More Up to Date
First up are the Hike Life books from Rozanna Purcell. These are associated with a hiking community that embarks on day hikes around Ireland. The first was published in 2023 with the second following it in 2024. There is whole island coverage in both, featuring all of Ireland's provinces in each selection of fifty walks. Glossy photos abound, most of them featuring the author, it has to be said, so you get some sense of why routes get included. General introductions are followed by route overviews; any comments in the text around the need for decent maps and even guides give you an eye that the intentions are not to be comprehensive here. Complementing the hikes are suggestions for places to stay and dine along with places for swimming, not particularly an interest of mine.
The lifestyle bite size style of doing things also applies to Gill's Great Irish Walks and Hikes, which also covers the whole island of Ireland. This does not get an author's name on its front, yet it includes maps, a feature missing from the Hike Life books. A jarring glitch comes in the form of the Purple Mountain route getting a description more appropriate to that for Brandon Mountain, also featured in the same book. Nevertheless, it mostly deserves the praise lavished on it in a note on a bookshelf in the Cork store of Waterstones. Route descriptions comprise the bulk of the text, along with notes on history and other points of interest. Though lightweight in some ways, this is an out-and-out hiking book, unlike others that I mention in this piece.
From the same publisher, you also get The Great Irish Bucket List, which goes beyond the outdoors theme to include other places to go in Ireland. That leads me onto Wild Guide: West of Ireland, which is another tome that is worth a looking. This also goes beyond hiking to include other attractions (heritage, nature, dining and wild camping are among these), and Wild Things Publishing does not forget their wild swimming heritage either. Every county in the province of Connaught gains deserved coverage, much like Donegal, Clare, Limerick (often overlooked in guidebooks, to be honest), Kerry and Cork. You do not get large text in these, so you need sound eyesight to peruse the spots that are listed in this volume. Otherwise, it is one to dip into on an occasional basis, as the format does not lend itself to completion in one stretch of time.
Going Back in Time
While this set of musings has mentioned books that are more general than hiking in their outdoors outlook, there are some older ones with which I caught up after their being in my possession for too long. The first of these takes us back to the early 1990's: Great Walks: Ireland by David Herman, who left his job to embark on a career writing Irish hiking guidebooks. Later on, he became frustrated by the dependence on permissive land access and its associated uncertainties, but not before providing extensive coverage of Ireland through a range of books distributed by Shanksmare Publications, many of which I also had, at least for a while. The text for this one is what you would expect for a walking guidebook: detailed descriptions to show you the ways. Maps at this time were often poor, thus necessitating the additional detail. Thankfully, that has improved massively in the intervening decades.
Moving from Irish authorship to an English one, we come to Walking Ireland by Tom Lawton. This too is an older book that I have had for quite a while, and I have yet to finish it. Somehow, the text never grabbed me and other things took my attention instead. Various routes are assembled, often with the help of local guides, possibly essential when you are exploring somewhere from further away. It, too, is set in its own time, though maybe not as much as David Herman's book that I mentioned already. Details are included here too, making this less of something to consult quickly for an idea but more for planning an actual excursion.
Final Thoughts
If you want detailed route descriptions from more recently published books, I suggest that you check out what has been produced by The Collins Press (now an imprint of Gill) or The O' Brien Press, for there is much to use in those selections. Knife Outdoor Guidebooks offer some coverage for parts of Northern Ireland as well. There was a time when Cicerone offered two guidebooks for Irish hill and coastal walking, but alas these are out of print and became less current anyway.
To close, this post has conflated books containing different levels of detail and serving different interests. It also has gone back and forth in time, comparing the lighter tomes of the present with what remains from decades ago. All have their uses, especially when coming up with ideas for Irish outdoor excursions can be more challenging than it needs to be.
