What a Difference a Day Makes: Eamonn Keaveney — It’s the trip of a lifetime, just with sore feet

Irish adventurer Eamonn Keaveney has been walking barefoot across Europe for the past eight months, breaking a Guinness World Record on the way. He tells Helen O’Callaghan about the ups and downs, the state of his feet — and why he’s doing this for Jigsaw, Ireland’s youth mental health charity, and for Friends of the Earth

Eamonn Keaveney: "Walking every day I’ve a lot of time to think. Reflections on the nature of people mainly. No matter where I go, what country, people have been very helpful, offering me food, water, lifts I had to refuse."

This walk I’m doing, barefoot, is on the back of a 2,000-kilometre walk I did in 2016 around Ireland — at the time a Guinness World Record for the longest barefoot walk. That was for Pieta House, for suicide and self-harm prevention.

Ever since finishing that I wanted to take on another big walk. I considered walking across the US but there was something not quite right about it. Sometimes an idea has a sort of pull — walking across America didn’t, it never fit.