Donal Hickey: People are seeing the value of urban parks, particularly in Cork

Parks are sometimes overlooked in Ireland but green spaces can boost our physical and mental health

Fionn Hegarty from Cork city pictured cycling through Fitzgerald Park, Cork during the Covid 19 pandemic. Picture: Daragh Mc Sweeney/Provision

For those of us reared in the country, the fields, bogs and moorlands were our parks where we were free to roam and connect with the natural world. Our city cousins, who visited during the summer holidays, must have envied us.

The late essayist and rural philosopher, Con Houlihan, who loved the bog, comes to mind. He wrote with some sympathy for people who only associated the word turf with betting shops and racehorses. Con understood the bog which, he noted, “brought people back to their primal selves’’.