For more than 60 years I have cycled and walked all over Ireland. This year I was barred by doctor’s orders from my usual week’s cycling, this time in Kerry (again). So I am going to write about 14 of the extraordinary places I have visited in that time on foot and on bicycle. I have tried, as far as I can, to pick places that are remote from the tourist trail.

I will start with what is probably my favourite hill walk on this beloved island.This starts at Oldbridge in County Wicklow at the southern end of Lough Dan, opposite the scout centre. You follow a small road and forest tracks and then up a steep path to Scarr mountain, which gives you a panoramic view of the whole of Wicklow, from the Sugar Loaf in the north to Lugnaquilla and Croaghanmoira in the south. Then it’s north-west across boggy semi-paths to Kanturk, down through the appropriately named ‘Slough’ (not to be attempted after wet weather!) and back to the shores of Lough Dan. The last mile or so is along a marvellously picturesque and well-marked track on the banks of that prettiest of Wicklow lakes. This is an excellent walk for fit and slightly adventurous foreign visitors, a beautiful three-hour outing only an hour’s drive from Dublin.

My favourite hotel in Ireland is Hunter’s Hotel at Newrath Bridge near Rathnew, a few miles north of Wicklow town. This wonderful old ‘coaching inn’, built around 1720 and expertly and generously managed by the Gelletlie brothers, Richard and Tom, must be unique in Ireland: for its antiquity as a functioning hostelry, its delightful gardens (vegetable, lawn and flower) and its warm and hospitable atmosphere. It is my favourite ‘overnighting’ place in Ireland by a distance. This is the first of two places in the country I hope to find in heaven if I ever get there.

Then there are the Blackstairs Mountains in County Wexford. I was visiting a friend who lives in a house at the head of a glen half way up one of those mountains, in a place called Corrageen, earlier this month. It was a perfect summer evening when I walked across a rough field – surely the highest field in Wexford – towards the central 735 metre summit in those hills,. As I lay down in the sun-dried grass on that mountainside and looked across the historic plain of Killane (as in the 1798 ballad ‘Kelly the Boy from Killane’) and Enniscorthy to Vinegar Hill and the Irish Sea, I experienced one of those blissful moments of total peace and contentment that happen only rarely in this busy and sometimes conflicted life.

My next places are four of Ireland’s glorious beaches and bathing places, all of them in Munster. I often thank the gods for Ireland’s inclement weather (not much in evidence during the past summer) which prevents our beaches – surely among the world’s finest – from being overwhlmed by foreign tourists. The first is the Cove across the harbour from Kinsale. This exquisite small beach in its sheltered estuary is always in danger of being overrun by visitors from Cork city and further afield, so on fine days it’s best to visit it first thing in the morning.

Seventy kilometres further westwards along the Cork coast is Lough Hyne, a unique warm seawater lake that sustains an enormous variety of plants and animals, many of which are not found anywhere else in Ireland. Along its western bank on the small road to Barlogue pier, you will see – if you are alert to it – a tiny jetty which is an ideal swimming spot. I have swum here from March to November without suffering overmuch from the cold.

West again is Sherkin Island, reached by a regular ferry from the pretty yachting and fishing village of Baltimore. On a sunny day the short walk from Sherkin pier to Silver Strand, past the (now closed) island school and through a grove of shady trees, is magical. I often imagine that if I went to heaven, just beyond the pearly gates would be this marvellous stroll. A warning: the sea off Silver Strand is usually freezing!

Over the border in Kerry, on the shores of Dingle Bay, is Ventry beach. This magnificent arc of sand, looking across to the Kerry mountains, must be one of the world’s great beaches. And yet when I visited it on a hot day in June it was almost completely deserted.

Talking of the Kerry mountains, my favourite (and certainly the most remote) cafe in the country used to be the Cookie Monster cafe (now unfortunately closed) in the wilderness of the Bridia Valley under Ireland’s highest mountain, Carrantouhill. Six years ago I approached it across a rocky pass from the equally remote Black Valley while escaping Covid by walking the Kerry Way. Most Irish people haven’t a clue about this most magnificent of long-distance walks, although it is well-known in Britain and Europe. What a marvellous experience they are missing – this is the unspoilt Irish wilderness at its most sublime.

However, perhaps my favourite mountain area in the country is north Connemara and south Mayo, around the Twelve Bens and Mweelrea. Here I have walked and climbed with daughters and friends up the ‘Ramp’ under Ben Bury, a steep, forbidding but spectacular trek that begins at Doo Lough (scene of the terrible 1847 ‘famine walk’ when scores of people died in appalling winter conditions after being turned away for famine relief) and ends with a tramp across the broad plateau which leads to the peak of Mweelrea, Connacht’s highest mountain. Not to be attempted in bad weather!

On the other side of Mweelrea is Killary Harbour, Ireland’s longest and most beautiful fjord (which was said 120 years ago to be large and deep enough to house Britain’s entire Royal Navy, when that navy was the world’s largest). Here is a 16 kilometre walk along the southern lough shore (or about half that length if you leave a second car at Bunowen), which is best concluded with a pint in Hamilton’s cosy bar in Leenane. This is a walk I have been doing since was 18 years old, when there was a marvellously remote youth hostel, presided over by the memorable Festy Mortimer (and in a house once inhabited by the Austrian philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein) at the tiny fishing harbour of Rosroe at the start of the walk.

Finally to the North. Here, although most of my childhood summers were spent in my grandfather’s wooden ‘gypsy’ caravan in Portrush (built by him on an old horse-drawn fire engine chassis), my preferred beach is the one along the coast at the bustling and friendly north Antrim town of Ballycastle. That evangelical grandfather’s influence is evident in my 12th favourite place, the little Reformed Presbyterian Church beside the Kellswater river between Ballymena and Antrim, where they used to prefer to sing unaccompanied psalms rather than hymns to music.

I lived for 14 years as a lodger in a handsome Georgian house in the Mall in Armagh, owned by my esteemed astronomer friend John Butler. They were largely happy, if extremely, busy years as I opened and ran the Centre for Cross Border Studies (now the Centre for Cross Border Cooperation) in the town. The gorgeous green sward of the Mall, with its tree-lined avenues and cricket pitches, was always a balm to the soul in stressful times.

Last of all is Slieve Donard in the Mournes in County Down, the highest mountain in Northern Ireland. This lies above the charming seaside resort of Newcastle, and you begin the walk to its summit in the town’s Donard Park. It’s not a particularly difficult four-five hour walk up and down, but unlike in Kerry and Wicklow you start the ascent from sea level, so by the time you reach the top up a particularly steep incline, you feel every centimetre of its 850 metres!

Please excuse the excess of superlatives in this blog, gentle reader: superlative is what I feel when I think of walking or cycling in the Irish hills and mountains, seascapes and countryside.