Walking to the Foot of the Sky: ‘A captivating odyssey’ – Richard Nairn

Description

‘A pleasure to read’ – Irish TimesI want to walk through time, for days, for nights, I want every kind of walk, walks under sunsets and stars, walks of rain and storms, through howling winds and the most susurrating of breezes. I want to see, I realise, not just this kind of landscape of trees and fields and fences, I want to walk on top of mountains, over endless expanses of moor, wild reaches and spaces, I want to escape all people, I want to walk alone, I look at the horizon, and realise the foolhardy extent and scale of my ambition that has taken root and now grows within me and will not be silenced, suffocated or hemmed in – an ambition to walk completely to the edge. I need to burst through all the walls, to rise past all limits, to go right to the foot of the sky. When she first set foot on the Beara Breifne Way, Miriam Mulcahy expected a long-distance hike that would take her across some of the most beautiful scenery in Ireland. What she found instead was a living tapestry past and present: ancient landscapes where myth and memory linger; pilgrim routes and rebel roads; quiet villages, wild coastlines, hidden valleys, and the ghostly thread that ties them all together. Following in the footsteps of Domhnall Cam O’Sullivan Beare’s fateful march in 1603, she begins her journey uncertain – of the path, of herself, of what she hopes to find. But as the miles unfurl, something shifts, and she begins to carve a line of connection in time. This is an extraordinary story of landscape and legacy, of attention and endurance, of losing sight of yourself and finding something far better: renewal. Lyrical, reflective and quietly radical, it captures what happens when you give yourself over fully to a journey – and how, in doing so, you return changed.