Enthralling walk around Ireland’s people and wildlife

Review by Dick Warner

Saturday, December 17, 2011

Michael Fewer’s Ireland: People, Places, Walking and Wildlife
Michael Fewer
Ashfield Press;
€25

MICHAEL FEWER’S Ireland — People, Places, Walking and Wildlife is the title of the latest book from a man who has spent over 20 years exploring this country on foot, concentrating on some of the more remote and inaccessible parts of it. It’s also his best book to date. The subject matter has a more universal appeal and the writing has matured into a pleasing, easy-going style.

The book tells the story of numerous walks he has undertaken in different parts of Ireland from Tory Island to the Waterford coast, with a lot of the hillier bits in between these two extremities.

The appeal comes from the author’s wide ranging curiosity. Walking to him is not just about places, it’s also about people. And it’s about wild animals, birds and plants, folklore, rural planning and Irish traditional music. He’s not didactic on any subject but his enthusiasm is invariably infectious.

On top of this he’s a gifted amateur photographer and the book is illustrated with hundreds of colour images, many of them capturing views of places most of us are unlikely to ever visit. He even managed to photograph a corncrake, one of the most difficult Irish birds to see, let alone capture on camera.

There are also maps of most of the walks, so you could use the book as a walking guide if you wanted to follow in his footsteps. However, I don’t think that’s what the author intended or how most readers will use it. It’s really a book for the armchair walker whiling away those dark winter evenings by the fire-side and dreaming of next summer. It’s more inspirational than navigational.

A short extract captures his approach to rural exploration: "He invited me in for a cup of tea and, as he put the kettle on, told me how much he enjoyed his life on Tory. Some islanders, he said, were very fixed in their ways, a natural condition born out of the isolation they have had to endure. Although tradition was important to the older islanders, traditional activities and practices were dying out: he pointed out of the window to the many fertile fields on the island now left fallow, and said that potatoes had to be imported by ferry from the mainland."

What comes across is a polite but inquisitive stranger learning truths about a place that would never be revealed to the average visitor. Travel writing should be like this, but often isn’t — particularly when the author is exploring his own country. In the section on Waterford, where Michael Fewer grew up, he even explores some of his own family history, telling us how his love of hill walking grew out of family picnics in the Comeragh mountains, and illustrating this with a couple of charming 1950s black and white photographs from the family album.

Even if you’re not a walker, just someone who’s interested in our countryside and its inhabitants, you’ll enjoy this modest but insightful ramble round Ireland.

This appeared in the printed version of the Irish Examiner Saturday, December 17, 2011