Step out and enjoy our beautiful country

TO ME — as to most of us — many parts of Ireland are a foreign country, one which, in general, is full of fascination.

Select any manageable loop walk of say, 8km, off an Ordnance Survey map (not necessarily a waymarked route) and it will be the rare exception rather than the rule if one does not find within its encompass two or three historic or prehistoric sites, a few nice views, a mountain, a sea coast, a lake or river, and a diversity of landscape.

Towns and villages one has never visited before turn out to have something notable or unique about them, or great charm in the layout of the streets, the buildings, the bridges. In the countryside, there are historic ruins everywhere. I do not include the ghost estates; these are unlikely to survive into ‘history’, but will succumb more quickly than the old ruins to our Irish weather. Concrete blocks and plasterboard crumble long before stone and lime mortar. Perhaps, in the case of these estates, built with profit rather than social service, it is just as well.