The Pathless Land: Finding a Way Across Ireland

by Tim Hannigan

An epic journey on foot from Dingle to Burr Point in search of Ireland's lost footpaths, and a quest to unravel the complexities of countryside access in Ireland and Britain.

Ireland is a pathless land. Public access to the Irish countryside is more limited than almost anywhere else in Europe – no right to roam, no network of footpaths across the landscape and minimal legal protection for existing rights of way. When Tim Hannigan discovers a forgotten web of paths recorded on an old map of Ireland, he sets out on an epic journey to find out how the country lost its ways.

As well as an evocative travelogue and a fascinating exploration of the turbulent history of the land in Ireland, The Pathless Land also offers an important new perspective on contemporary debates about extending the “right to roam” in neighbouring Britain, and asks vital but neglected questions about the most practical mechanisms for public access in heavily agricultural landscapes.

This is also a deeply personal journey for the author. Born in Cornwall but living and raising a family in County Galway, he must confront awkward questions about landscape and identity, and about the connections between walking and belonging, as he struggles to find his way across a pathless land.

Genres: Nonfiction, Nature, Travel, Ireland

353 pages, Kindle Edition

Published September 3, 2026

About the author

Tim Hannigan was born in Penzance in Cornwall in the far west of the United Kingdom. Before becoming a full-time writer, he worked as a chef and an English teacher. He started his writing career as a travel journalist based in Indonesia. His first book, Murder in the Hindu Kush (The History Press, 2011), was shortlisted for the Boardman Tasker Prize. His second book, Raffles and the British Invasion of Java (Monsoon Books, 2012), won the 2013 John Brooks Award. He also wrote A Brief History of Indonesia (Tuttle, 2015), and edited and wrote new chapters for Willard Hanna's classic narrative history of Bali, now republished as A Brief History of Bali (Tuttle, 2016). His more recent books include The Travel Writing Tribe (2021) and The Granite Kingdom (2023). He has worked on guidebooks to many destinations including Nepal, India, Myanmar, Bali and Cornwall.

Reviews

[Sarah · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was a fascinating book especially if you enjoy travel and nature writing with history mixed in.
I shamefully admit that I knew almost nothing about Ireland other than stereotypes, U2 and Father Ted on tv. I didn’t even really know anything about its geography. I’m grateful for this book and books like it, where the author has set himself a challenge that provides a point of entry - in this case, attempting to walk the length of Ireland - and then expands into a history of the land and it’s people.
I had never given much thought to the idea that some countries would be more walkable, or walker-friendly, than others. Coming from New Zealand, where walking in nature is an inherent part of who we are, it is completely foreign to me. Ireland has a huge lack of footpaths and walking trails, and I felt the author’s pain as he walked for miles on actual tarmac roads, as there was no other option. You see the tension of crossing land and camping on land he’s not entirely sure he’s allowed to be on, and the discovery and excitement of finding old, hidden paths to use during his journey.
The history of the land going right back to Gaelic times really fascinated me. The conflicts and effects of colonialism, the famine and the blight, and the disputes over land and the way it ended up parceled out have made me eager to learn more.
If you enjoy books like Wild, or Wayfarer, or are interested in things like the Camino, I think you’d get a lot out of this book.
Thank you so much to NetGalley and the publisher for the digital ARC.

[Marlienable · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Pathless Land Tim Hannigan


The Pathless Land by Tim Hannigan sets out to answer a question that sounds simple: why is public access to the Irish countryside so limited, and what does that scarcity of footpaths reveal about land, power, and belonging?

Hannigan’s project is compelling. He walks from Dingle to Burr Point trying to stick to footpaths (or open country) as much as possible, and along the way the book becomes three things at once: an immersive travelogue, a well-researched account of how Irish land was shaped by violence and enclosure, and a practical interrogation of “right to roam” debates in Britain and Ireland.

There’s a lot Hannigan does right. The book is rich in landscape detail, and he has a gift for the small, human encounters that keep a long walking narrative alive: the conversations, the gates and dead ends, the people who help, the people who don’t, the moments of awkwardness that tell you more than a clean summary ever could. The historical passages, too, are substantial. When he digs into the turbulent story of land in Ireland, the book gains weight and urgency.

And yet, for all that, this didn’t fully grip me.
Part of it is structural. Hannigan is often excellent at describing where he is, but I found some of the place-based descriptions hard to follow without a stronger mental map. My knowledge of Irish topography is, realistically, limited to one trip to Dublin and the emotional geography of Sally Rooney novels, so there were stretches where I lost my footing as a reader even if Hannigan knew exactly where he was going.

But the bigger issue, for me, is the “deeply personal journey” promise in the description. Somewhere around the 75% mark, Hannigan reveals that although he is British, he is largely descended from Irish famine refugees. I understand the sensitivity here, and I appreciate that he doesn’t barrel through questions of identity as if they’re decorative. At the same time, placing that piece of his story so far into the background felt like a missed opportunity. It’s not a minor biographical detail. It changes the emotional and ethical stakes of the whole project. If the book is asking what it means to walk a land and claim belonging, then the author’s relationship to that land is not something I wanted as a late reveal. I wanted it to be present earlier, and handled with more personal attention throughout.

Because that tension is, arguably, the centre of the book: access and ownership, who gets to move freely, who is allowed to feel at home, and how history lives in the most ordinary things, in place names, boundaries and locked gates.

So: I admired this book more than I loved it. I’m glad it exists, and I think it offers a valuable perspective on countryside access that doesn’t reduce the issue to individual walkers versus individual farmers. It’s more complex than that, and Hannigan treats it that way. But I finished it wishing the personal thread had been woven tighter, and that the geographic specificity had been made more navigable for readers without a strong internal map of Ireland.

This was a book I admired more than I devoured, but I’m still giving it a squeaked four stars for the ambition and the depth of its research. Hannigan takes countryside access seriously, refuses easy answers, and the historical chapters add real weight. I just wish the personal stakes had been woven in earlier, and that some of the placebased writing had been a little easier to follow without a map in my head.

Thank you to the author, publisher and Netgalley for a free digital copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

[Carlton · Rating 4 out of 5]

A lovely gentle travelogue of a series of walks that link to cross Ireland. As well as descriptions of the landscape and encounters on the walk, there is an episodic recounting of Irish history that builds the reader’s understanding of the country being walked.
I’ve read a number of books by Irish authors in recent years and a couple of histories (to help understand the differences from England, the oppressor for many centuries), so I thought I’d try a travel book and I’d already read a couple of books by Hannigan, including the excellent The Travel Writing Tribe, so this was an easy choice.
Hannigan really hits his stride from chapter 5, once he gives himself the time to talk about the history of the land he’s walking through, and describes the nature. There are lovely descriptions of sightings, such as a red squirrel with young and seeing a “heron burst out of the channel with histrionic outrage at my passing.”
Hannigan has a twenty first century sensibility to history, with measured discussion of the multiple waves of English colonisation over the centuries, and the potato famine of the 1840’s. He also has a disarming awareness of his English nationality when discussing his encounters with Irish individuals (Hannigan offers his Cornish identity as a mitigating factor to his English nationality, something he explores more in The Granite Kingdom. I have empathy with this attitude coming from another “Celtic fringe” nation).

The book is also about the existence of public rights of way in Ireland, where it appears that there are few compared to other countries, certainly far fewer than in England and Wales. This is interesting, but unfortunately Hannigan makes this a repetitive soapbox issue, rather than a limited number of more pointed discussions, and the repetition was repetitive and skimmed accordingly.

I received a Netgalley copy of this book, but this review is my honest opinion.

[Violet · Rating 5 out of 5]

When I moved to Ireland from the UK, the lack of "good walks" was the main thing I complained about, and like Tim Hannigan, who moved to Galway from Cornwall, no one around me seemed to mind the lack of statutory right of access to the countryside.
So I found this book extremely validating because he goes through everything that has bothered me: the walks available are short, they don't connect, the paths are often covered with tarmac, many of them are in uninteresting conifer plantations rather than woods, and everywhere I'd like to go has a big NO TRESPASSERS sign on it. And most of these walks are only accessible by car. Any access is permissive only so could be withdrawn at any time.

I enjoy a good travel book and this compares to similar walking books I have read before like Robert MacFarlane. Hannigan starts in Dunmore Head, south west, and walks to Burr Point (roughly its north east opposite on a map), over several weeks, and details his journey: the planning, the maps, the changes of plans when a path appears or disappears, people he meets, and of course the history of land access, tenants and landlords.
He also attends a few meetings of Keep Ireland Open, but this doesn't make you feel particularly optimistic as their ambitions seem modest and their progress very slow.

I found the book really enjoyable, very informative but light and pleasantly written with a good variety of sources. My only regret is that each chapter starts with a picture and I would have preferred a map showing the section Hannigan writes about. Other than that... five stars and I am sure this will be a very successful book when it comes out in September.

Free ARC sent by Netgalley.

[Amanda · Rating 5 out of 5]

Thanks to Head of Zeus and Netgalley.co.uk for an ARC of this book in return for an unbiased review.

Where to start... Everything about this book is enlightening. From the author's first description of his planned journey, to his knowledge of Irelands trespass laws, and his obvious love for the history of Ireland, I found this book entirely encompassing.
There is so much for readers to take from this book, and it is written with such passion and an adventurous but honest standpoint, that it will appeal to both seasoned walkers and complete beginners who, like me, have recently taken up the walking poles. It will also appeal to anyone with an interest in Irelands history, geology, or archaeology, as these are some of the themes covered.
My dream of taking walks all over the UK and Italy is fired once again by the sheer brilliance of this author's words, which are beautifully descriptive, whilst giving the reader a down-to-earth reality bump, that this has not been an easy challenge for the author to undertake.
The historical references are well researched and documented so that further reading of each subject can be gleaned if the reader so desires. That is not meant to say that this is an academic book. It is both informative and interesting, without the reader becoming bored or "bogged down" with facts and figures. The reader can take as much or as little interest in these historical notes as they require without it diminishing the meaning of the book.
I will definitely be recommending this book to my family and friends.

[D · Rating 5 out of 5]

Review of advance paperback copy received from Head of Zeus Publishers.

At first glance, this is a gentle travelogue that draws on the author's memories of roaming public pathways in Cornwall (UK), while portraying the lack of similar walking routes in contemporary Ireland. Tim Hannigan sets the premise in his opening scene, where he is confronted with a sign denying entry to hillwalkers and trespassers, two terms often unified in the minds of Irish farmers and landowners. Unlike Britain, Irish legislation does not offer the ‘right to roam’, as evidenced in court cases where Irish authorities have tended to side with the landowner.
But delve deeper, and Tim Hannigan's intention to walk from the south to the north of his adopted home nation using a found map also becomes a mission to walk himself 'into a sense of belonging' (18). In doing so, he provides the reader with a beautifully crafted book that interweaves folklore, memory and nature. Rich with detail and well researched, Hannigan paints vibrant scenes; gates tied to old pallets, limping hares, and clutches of ancient beehives place the reader in the same space.
A really enjoyable, well crafted read - as another reader suggested, it would benefit from the inclusion of maps based on each section.