Well, I've said in the last few odd Pubski posts that I still need to write a post about my journey around Ireland last year. Recently I found waiting until I got the record certificate a good excuse to put it off, but unfortunately it just arrived.
I suppose, to make it easier on myself, I'll just begin at the beginning. A few different strands came together to result in this journey.
In early 2013, while I was still in university, I got a phone call from a friend whom I hadn't spoken to in some time. I was surprised already, and then he told me to sit down. A mutual friend of ours had committed suicide. Naturally, after the phone call, I went to Tesco to buy a six-pack of beer.
She was the kind of bubbly, always-smiling girl who instantly lights up the party, and also the kind I've discovered tend to be hiding crippling depression behind that same smile. I hadn't actually spoken to her in months, and discovered that no-one had - or rather, that she hadn't spoken to any of us, and was withdrawing herself from people.
It fucked me up a bit.
Time passed. The next summer I was climbing Croagh Patrick - the holy mountain in Mayo, visible on clear days from where I am now - with my friend Killian. It was the last Sunday in July, known as Reek Sunday locally, and a day on which thousands of people climb the Reek, some of them barefoot. As we were making our way back down, I started to think it'd be an interesting challenge to climb the highest peak in each of Ireland's four provinces barefoot. That's as far as I got, because I immediately forgot about it.
Some more time passed, and I was with my then-girlfriend (and some new friends) on the Camino in Spain. I did some of it barefoot - roughly 350km - but I was too slow to keep up, and did the majority in shoes. Still, when I returned I figured it'd be even cooler not just to climb the mountains barefoot, but also to walk from one to the other in one huge trek. A quick bit of Google Maps told me it'd be just a bit over a thousand kilometres. Like most things, I said "someday" and forgot about it.
A little more time went by - don't worry, this is the end of the inspiration story - and I was flicking through the new Guinness World Records book while sheltering from the rain in a bookshop. I flicked through the "Great Journeys" section, always my favourite, and saw it: the longest barefoot journey. 1488 kilometres, by Michael Essing, in his native Germany, and I thought, "I can beat that."
The rest was me deciding to do it the next year (i.e. last year), applying for the record, saving some money, buying equipment, and biding my time in TEFL, which I was already starting to hate a bit. I didn't go back afterward, either, but sadly also didn't manage to pick up any sage-like life wisdom or decide what to do with myself. Still working on that!
Around this time I also decided to raise money for Pieta House - an Irish organisation that counsels people at risk of suicide or self-harm for free. They have ten centres around Ireland now and are frighteningly busy. They have a good reputation because they've been very transparent about where the money goes (no scandals!) and because suicide is a very salient issue right now in Ireland.
I've just addressed the why and not given any actual indication of the what. Maybe I'll just use the old "narrate using pictures" escape. Here's the route:
After my walk, I merged all of the GPS files together and loaded it in Google Earth. It deviated a bit from my planned route, but that's not important. Apologies for the low resolution - it's just a screencap. I'd love to make a really nice cartographic map to hang on the wall with my route on it, but don't really have the knowhow.
[Edit: I just realised there's no indication of where I started. If you go due north of Galway, my hometown and starting point of Claremorris is about where you hit the white line of the route. The yellow line is the border between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland. I walked counterclockwise around the island.]
Anyway! Yeah, that was the route. Over 2,000 kilometres, every step barefoot, and no transportation used at any point (though sometimes people took my backpack ahead for me).
It would take too long to really describe the journey, and anyway if I ever write the book if the book ever gets published, you can all read about it there. ;) So here are some choice elements.
Yellow paint is your friend! Its smoothness got me through many a hard time. Really, though, the best place to walk is where cars' tires rub off the ground, but this is not always an option for obvious reasons.
Sorry to disappoint, but I didn't actually climb the mountains (yet). In this photo you can see Croagh Patrick in the background. This was on the morning of day three, when I was rapidly discovering how difficult it was, and had more-or-less decided to walk around the mountains instead.
I got to see some absolutely stunning places. This is Doo Lough Valley in Mayo, really out in the boondocks, for Ireland. I was really happy that I got to see such a huge amount of my own country, because so many people never see much at all of theirs, and travel elsewhere instead.
Resting my feet next to Killary Harbour just the next day.
Don't ask me.
What felt like the loneliest road in Ireland, and where I lost my mind for the first time. The surface was very rough, my feet were in a lot of pain, and it felt like I spent weeks walking through (it was hours).
My tent on the seventh night. I camped three times in three and a half months. That's insane.
Walking through one of the Irish-speaking areas of Ireland. The entire population is pictured.
So for the Guinness World Records I had to provide a fair amount of evidence. There were photos, videos, GPS files, a log book and a witness book... I took many photos like this next to a sign to prove I was where I was. Still in the Gaeltacht here; note that someone had removed "Galway". In Ireland, signs are usually in both English and Irish.
An obligatory shot of the Cliffs of Moher. I was too lazy to walk along the cliffs - the path was gravelly and I'd have to loop back anyway.
I've realised that so far this post is completely missing what for me was the best part of the walk - the people I met. People stopped me to talk to me or to donate, or to give me food. People brought me into their homes and fed me and gave me a place to sleep. I was left with a completely altered view of humanity - most people are really nice.
It's a shame that my richest memories of the walk are those shared with the people I met, because I can't post many of those photos. I lost my phone just after the walk, and with it all of the photos I'd taken with people (most of the photos here are from my camera, and I used my phone (for selfies with people). I have some photos with people, but they were taken from Facebook and the quality is atrocious. (I was taking photos on a Samsung Galaxy 1 and sending them to my sister via FB messenger, and then she uploaded them to my Facebook page). I've cheated here and just posted a photo of my friend Donal and I having a pint in Sligo toward the end.
I stayed in people's houses about half of the time, and the other half was a mix of B&Bs and hotels and so on (most of which did not charge me).
Down in Kerry. It's green! In the distance are the MacGillicuddy's Reeks, which I also did not climb.
These are both in Killarney, where I was joined for a couple of days by my housemate, Lucas. He was recovering from a knee surgery. This was also the day I miscalculated the distance and we ended up walking an extra ten kilometres. It was the longest day of the entire journey.
Possibly one of my favourite places on the entire journey. The Beara peninsula has a waymarked trail, which meant I had a respite from contending with traffic. The weather was being extremely un-Irish and lovely.
A sight that brought tears of joy to me eyes. I had a minor obsession with road surfaces by the end.
Eyeries, the original technicolour dream town.
This was at the top of an old road over the mountain that was used to access the now disused copper mines. The photo really doesn't do it justice; I sat here for twenty minutes looking out over the sea.
I am not a photographer.
Appreciating the view with my new sheep buddy.
Joined for a day by my friends Eoin and Jess! This turned out to be a long and difficult day for everyone owing to crappy backroads and a poor decision to have a midday pint.
I have very few photos of cities and towns because I usually used my ill-fated phone, and few photos of rainy days as well (they very much happened). Here are some more cliffs, this time way over in the southeast (I've skipped ahead a bit).
Approaching Tramore. In Irish, it's Trá Mór, which means "big beach". Yeah.
There's a rather strange little park filled with weird Hindu statues down in Wicklow. The owner was a bit pretentious and condescending, but the statues were... interesting.
My sheep friend. Approaching Dublin at this point, and well over halfway.
With my main man Killian at our alma mater; this tower is on the south campus in Maynooth.
The exact point in Ballynahinch where I broke the world record. Yep, right next to some wheelie bins.
Roads in Northern Ireland have (small) pavements!
Cows on the beach. You know you're in Ireland... At this point I was up on the northeastern coast, walking on a trail that ends up at the Giant's Causeway.
And at the causeway, it was busy.
Spotted in Derry/Londonderry. There was a lot of sectarian violence here back in the day. The gable paintings are quite famous.
Glenveagh National Park was beautiful, but the road was a nightmare for my feet. Mount Errigal is here hiding in the clouds on the right - another mountain I had originally intended to climb.
Entering Sligo, and getting very close to the end of my journey.
My sisters put this up for me as I was re-entering my hometown. There was quite a gathering in the square to welcome me back; if I was a weaker man, I might've cried. Then I had a load of pints.
I'm sorry the picture quality isn't greater and that it's just a few disconnected photos. It's really hard to choose out of so many moments, and to properly describe my journey.
So I'll take the lazy way out and give you a bunch of statistics!
Total distance: 2080.14km (1292.54 miles)
Duration: 104 days (from 1st May to 12th Aug)
Funds raised: €29,562.13
Avg. distance per day: 20km
Avg. not including rest days: 23.11km (longest was 37.75km)
Cost: ~€2000 (this doesn't include the equipment I bought beforehand, and is extrapolated from my bank statements) (it's also very little money, considering)
Nights camped: 3
Nights in private accommodation: 51
Nights in people's houses: 50
Pieces of glass removed from foot: 7
Thorns removed from foot: ~20 (does not include thorns that only got halfway, of which there were hundreds)
Number of sheep seen: Several billion
Cigarettes smoked: ~2000
Beers drunk: ~140
Number of ice creams received while walking: 7
Number of dogshits stood in: 0 (Yeah! Lots of sheepshit, though)
Apologies for how disorganised this post is. There's a whole lot more that I haven't touched on here at all. If you're interested, hopefully someday you'll be able to read my book about it. (If it ever gets anywhere, I'll definitely be sending some Hubski's way.)
Here are some bonus shots of my feet!
I'm a clean guy.
From a piece of glass.
The day after I finished.
Haha, don't worry rd, it seems the others have you covered. ;)
Thanks, Steve! Will do, and hopefully you'll have it someday before too long.
good article...
Veen! This is absolutely amazing - thank you so much! I do have one request if you don't mind. Is there any chance you could remove the towns not on the route (Shannon, Kilkenny, etc), and add Claremorris (it's where the ninth degree longitudinal intersects the red line north of Galway)? Only if it's not too much trouble. This is seriously sweet!
Veen, you are a beautiful soul and I will never again speak ill of the Dutch! Thank you so much - this is really cool, and I'm going to print it off ASAP.
No, I'm going to have to check then out. The only Bill Bryson book I've read is A Short History of Nearly Everything, which is a nice balance of informative and hilarious.
he wrote a book about walking the appalachian trail which you would presumably love, another about wandering around england after a long absence, and i just noticed he wrote a book last year about... wandering through england again. so i'll have to check that out.
loved the photos. whenever i plan my trip to ireland i'll consult you, naturally.
I'll definitely have a look so - I've heard wonderful things about the AT and it's something I'd love to do some far-off day.
Actually I met a girl on the Beara Way who had done the AT, the PCT and the CDT (she worked in some IT-related field part of the year, and spent the rest walking). I felt like bowing down.
What a great post. Thanks for "Baring Your Soles."
I occasionally go out barefoot, and will drop like a newborn calf if I walk over the smallest pebble. I tell myself in those weak moments that I'm actually a strong man but that I'm spoiled by all the shoes I've worn. And if I were to have lived like our pre-agricultural ancestors--barefoot since day one--I could walk over anything.
Do you think that's true? Do you think human feet exposed barefoot over a lifetime can become adjusted to walking normally on gravel or rocks? Or is 104 days not long enough to tell?
It's hard to say, to be honest. There are some barefoot groups online with an almost fanatic devotion to barefooting (up to considering shoes a serious cultural evil) and a lot of them claim that you can reach that point, but that it takes a very, very long time.
104 days wasn't long enough. The way I'd put it, you never get used to it - you get more used to it. Toward the end of my journey I was zooming over ground that would've crippled me earlier on, but I still wasn't able to walk over chunky gravel without grimacing. One of the hardest bits for me was near the end in Glenveagh National Park in Donegal - I had been starting to think at that point that my feet could walk over anything, and then I was humbled by the road.
Getting used to barefooting in urban areas is easy, though, because the pavements and roads are usually so smooth. If someone thinks their feet are very tough but they've only been walking around the city, they're in for an unpleasant surprise outside the concrete jungle.
There's also the matter of attrition - when your feet are fresh at the start of the day it's easier to walk over rough ground, but soreness will develop as the day goes on. It's generally variable though in that there's no proper linear progression in toughness over time, and terrain that was fine two days ago can be difficult today.
I think I'm going off on a tangent. If you wore shoes growing up, can your feet be retrained? Probably there are two elements. On the physiological side, the soles of your feet will need to toughen dramatically, and your feet will be misshapen from wearing shoes (crushed toes and narrow feet). This in turn will affect your gait, so it's unlikely that you'll walk in a way that minimises pain. Probably it takes much longer for the shape of your feet to go back to "normal" - if ever - than it does for the skin to toughen up. I think my feet widened slight and my toes came apart a little, but not nearly like a lifelong unshod foot.
Then there's the neurological side of things. I'm not a neuroscientist, but this is how I've had it described to me. Your feet are quite sensitive and send a lot of information to the brain, but because they're trapped in shoes, they essentially can't feel anything. When you take off your shoes, your feet are suddenly exposed to a huge amount of sensory input, which is incredibly uncomfortable, in addition to the pain of things poking into your feet. So I imagine it would also take some time for this to diminish.
It's pretty clear from peoples around the world that if raised barefoot from childhood, people can comfortably walk over ground that would make most of us cry. It's hard to know if this level can be fully re-attained.
There's a bit of a caveat though in that it depends on the terrain. I mean, there has to be a natural limit. The Tarahumara in Mexico are often used as the shining example of barefoot runners (thanks to Born to Run) but they wear sandals because where they live is covered with spiny plants and sharp rocks - no-one is walking over that barefoot.
I'd say if you have kids, try to have them walk around barefoot as much as possible. It'll probably make easier them to go unshod in future, but more importantly it's apparently better for your feet and legs and by extension your back.
I'm of the mind that barefoot walking or barefoot simulation, with thin-soled shoes, is good for posture and back, leg, and foot health.
Thanks for confirming that Hobbits are essentially the healthiest people of all time.
Again, thanks for the post and kudos to you!
This unusual feat of human determination, coupled with a fuck-it, why-not attitude is inspiring. Thanks for sharing, you fucking brilliant weirdo.
It was actually a big moment for me - the fuck it, why not thing and just going for it. I think I need to apply it in my life more often.
- After my walk, I merged all of the GPS files together and loaded it in Google Earth. It deviated a bit from my planned route, but that's not important. Apologies for the low resolution - it's just a screencap. I'd love to make a really nice cartographic map to hang on the wall with my route on it, but don't really have the knowhow
Send me the KML and I'll see what I can do!
Ah, no way! That would be super cool. I'll track it down sometime later when I'm on my computer.
Super into this! I'm very pro being barefoot and I admire you for toughening your feet up that much... among other things like having beaten a world record or something
It's nice, isn't it? When it's not uncomfortable, it's very freeing and makes one feel a lot more manoeuvrable.
I just discovered that I can't spell 'manoeuvrable' from memory. God bless spell check!
Thanks mk! I'm not sure, but I'd say the lowest couldn't have been colder than about 5°C, and the highest would've been around 25°C (which is considered furnace-type weather here!).