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. Many of the other Irish walking information websites and apps out there have seriously failed on this by spoon feeding every detail to recreational walkers. On paper, this spoon feed approach might sound like a good idea, but in reality it actually has the potential to be quite dangerous in the longer term.
By its very nature, recreational walking requires its 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 having the skills, fitness and equipment they need to navigate their way and to survive whatever nature throws at them.
Despite the best intentions of the people who deliver “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 appear to be in competition with each other in a blind race to provide the biggest one-stop website or app. The people behind those resources appear to be 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 them 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 to plan the finer details themselves using a printed hardcopy map. This approach gives walkers a valuable opportunity to brush up 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. 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 do not 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. This page includes an interactive map showing the coverage areas of all the published 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 walk leaders with proper outdoor skills to match.
Providing useful information for walkers while also promoting valuable outdoor skills is a very difficult balance to get right. Many of the other Irish walking information websites and apps out there have seriously failed on this by spoon feeding every detail to recreational walkers. On paper, this spoon feed approach might sound like a good idea, but in reality it actually has the potential to be quite dangerous in the longer term.
By its very nature, recreational walking requires its 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 having the skills, fitness and equipment they need to navigate their way and to survive whatever nature throws at them.
Despite the best intentions of the people who deliver “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 appear to be in competition with each other in a blind race to provide the biggest one-stop website or app. The people behind those resources appear to be 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 them 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 to plan the finer details themselves using a printed hardcopy map. This approach gives walkers a valuable opportunity to brush up 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. 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 do not 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. This page includes an interactive map showing the coverage areas of all the published 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 walk leaders with proper outdoor skills to match.
