When we first created The Ireland Walking Guide website, we had a very specific vision: to create a first-stop information resource for recreational walkers in Ireland without negatively impacting on their walk-planning abilities and navigation skills.
Providing useful information for walkers while also promoting valuable outdoor skills is a very difficult balance to get right. Unfortunately, many of the other Irish walking information websites and apps out there are seriously failing walkers by trying to spoon feed them every detail. On paper, a spoon feed approach might sound like a good idea, but in reality it is harming walkers' basic planning and navigation skills. In the longer term, an increasingly unskilled community of hillwalkers could actually become quite a dangerous scenario, placing an unmanageable burden on Ireland's voluntary mountain rescue teams.
By its very nature, recreational walking requires participants (hillwalkers especially) to be more independent than the average person. Not only for the purpose of transporting themselves entirely under their own steam, but also by possessing the skills, fitness and equipment they need to plan routes, navigate their way, and to survive whatever nature throws at them.
Despite the best intentions of the people behind “one-stop” walking websites and apps, their spoon-feed approach is actually doing certain types of walkers more harm than good. In particular, those resources are giving hillwalkers a false sense of security by making them believe that they are adequately prepared and equipped for a day in the wild, even those who possess no outdoor skills at all. This belief couldn't be further from the truth.
Since 2000, many online walking resources have come and gone. Some good and some bad. Many of them are in competition with each other in a blind race to provide the biggest "one-stop" website or app. The people behind those resources are clearly more interested in their user statistics or generating as much money as quickly as possible. They also appear to be completely oblivious to the damage they are doing to walkers' outdoor skills by removing those walkers from the route-planning and navigating processes.
Some of these other resources are making the situation even worse by introducing artificial intelligence (AI) to their route-planning service. The Ireland Walking Guide provides walkers with just the right amount of information so they can plan the finer details themselves using a printed hardcopy map. This approach gives walkers a valuable opportunity to brush up on their map-reading skills and familiarise themselves with their upcoming walk from the comfort of their own home.
Since 2000, there has also been a rise in the number of hillwalkers in Ireland. Many of them are novices, heading into the hills armed only with the information spoon-fed to them by a website or app. Many will also be relying entirely on a phone app to lead them instead of actually navigating themselves using a hardcopy map and compass. Alarmingly, the majority of hillwalkers in Ireland no longer carry paper maps, not even as a back-up for when technology lets them down. Instead, they are delegating all walk leader duties to their phone, handheld GPS or even their watch. Not only is this a dangerous trend, hillwalkers who are being guided in this way tend to grow more and more dependent on spoon-feed websites and apps. Such a dependency prevents novices from developing valuable outdoor skills, and discourages seasoned hillwalkers from maintaining theirs (“use it or lose it” has never been so true). The Ireland Walking Guide provides a very handy webpage dedicated to helping walkers identify which printed hardcopy maps to use. That page includes an interactive map showing the coverage areas of all the published hardcopy maps which we recommend to recreational walkers. No other website does this.
The Ireland Walking Guide is the only All-Ireland online walking resource designed to encourage walkers to take a more hands-on and active role in route planning and to navigate their walks in the outdoors without the help of screens. Our goal is to gently nudge walkers back on track towards becoming competent self-leaders with proper outdoor skills to match.
We would also like to point out that the apps which provide a digital version of recommended hardcopy paper maps require you to pay an annual subscription which equates to the cost of one or two of those paper titles. You will be far better off all round by not using digital mapping through subscription apps and buy a couple of paper maps each year with the money you save. Thinking ahead, if you become over-dependent on an app for route planning and navigation, how do you expect to cope when that app inevitably ceases to exist? A paper map may not be a forever solution, but some hillwalkers today are known to regularly use the same time- and field-tested sheet they bought decades ago. So, let's say the areas where you undertake your normal hillwalking activities are covered by 10 different paper maps. Their total cost equates to 5 years (at most) of subscribing to an app, but you would be getting 20 years (or more) hands-on route planning and navigation use out of those paper maps. Why would you waste your money on an unnecessary service that could be discontinued at any time, when you can invest in your own outdoor skills for years to come for a fraction of the cost? One app is so desperate for your money and dependency on the unnecessary service they provide that they are trying to tempt you to pay for a 5-year subscription. Don't fall for their trap. That app is clearly a get-rich-quick project and probably won't even exist in 5 years from now.
Ditch the app, and get a map. Recreational walking is far more satifying when you are your own leader.
Providing useful information for walkers while also promoting valuable outdoor skills is a very difficult balance to get right. Unfortunately, many of the other Irish walking information websites and apps out there are seriously failing walkers by trying to spoon feed them every detail. On paper, a spoon feed approach might sound like a good idea, but in reality it is harming walkers' basic planning and navigation skills. In the longer term, an increasingly unskilled community of hillwalkers could actually become quite a dangerous scenario, placing an unmanageable burden on Ireland's voluntary mountain rescue teams.
By its very nature, recreational walking requires participants (hillwalkers especially) to be more independent than the average person. Not only for the purpose of transporting themselves entirely under their own steam, but also by possessing the skills, fitness and equipment they need to plan routes, navigate their way, and to survive whatever nature throws at them.
Despite the best intentions of the people behind “one-stop” walking websites and apps, their spoon-feed approach is actually doing certain types of walkers more harm than good. In particular, those resources are giving hillwalkers a false sense of security by making them believe that they are adequately prepared and equipped for a day in the wild, even those who possess no outdoor skills at all. This belief couldn't be further from the truth.
Since 2000, many online walking resources have come and gone. Some good and some bad. Many of them are in competition with each other in a blind race to provide the biggest "one-stop" website or app. The people behind those resources are clearly more interested in their user statistics or generating as much money as quickly as possible. They also appear to be completely oblivious to the damage they are doing to walkers' outdoor skills by removing those walkers from the route-planning and navigating processes.
Some of these other resources are making the situation even worse by introducing artificial intelligence (AI) to their route-planning service. The Ireland Walking Guide provides walkers with just the right amount of information so they can plan the finer details themselves using a printed hardcopy map. This approach gives walkers a valuable opportunity to brush up on their map-reading skills and familiarise themselves with their upcoming walk from the comfort of their own home.
Since 2000, there has also been a rise in the number of hillwalkers in Ireland. Many of them are novices, heading into the hills armed only with the information spoon-fed to them by a website or app. Many will also be relying entirely on a phone app to lead them instead of actually navigating themselves using a hardcopy map and compass. Alarmingly, the majority of hillwalkers in Ireland no longer carry paper maps, not even as a back-up for when technology lets them down. Instead, they are delegating all walk leader duties to their phone, handheld GPS or even their watch. Not only is this a dangerous trend, hillwalkers who are being guided in this way tend to grow more and more dependent on spoon-feed websites and apps. Such a dependency prevents novices from developing valuable outdoor skills, and discourages seasoned hillwalkers from maintaining theirs (“use it or lose it” has never been so true). The Ireland Walking Guide provides a very handy webpage dedicated to helping walkers identify which printed hardcopy maps to use. That page includes an interactive map showing the coverage areas of all the published hardcopy maps which we recommend to recreational walkers. No other website does this.
The Ireland Walking Guide is the only All-Ireland online walking resource designed to encourage walkers to take a more hands-on and active role in route planning and to navigate their walks in the outdoors without the help of screens. Our goal is to gently nudge walkers back on track towards becoming competent self-leaders with proper outdoor skills to match.
We would also like to point out that the apps which provide a digital version of recommended hardcopy paper maps require you to pay an annual subscription which equates to the cost of one or two of those paper titles. You will be far better off all round by not using digital mapping through subscription apps and buy a couple of paper maps each year with the money you save. Thinking ahead, if you become over-dependent on an app for route planning and navigation, how do you expect to cope when that app inevitably ceases to exist? A paper map may not be a forever solution, but some hillwalkers today are known to regularly use the same time- and field-tested sheet they bought decades ago. So, let's say the areas where you undertake your normal hillwalking activities are covered by 10 different paper maps. Their total cost equates to 5 years (at most) of subscribing to an app, but you would be getting 20 years (or more) hands-on route planning and navigation use out of those paper maps. Why would you waste your money on an unnecessary service that could be discontinued at any time, when you can invest in your own outdoor skills for years to come for a fraction of the cost? One app is so desperate for your money and dependency on the unnecessary service they provide that they are trying to tempt you to pay for a 5-year subscription. Don't fall for their trap. That app is clearly a get-rich-quick project and probably won't even exist in 5 years from now.
Ditch the app, and get a map. Recreational walking is far more satifying when you are your own leader.
