Is it illegal for me to just drive at a random location in Ireland and go directly into wilderness? Jokes aside, that is one of my life long dreams to just get lost somewhere where I have never been before.

42 comments

  3. Is it possible to get lost in the wilderness in Ireland? No matter where you are your not far from some town or village

  4. There’s no wilderness in Ireland, best you can get is somewhere a bit inaccessible like up a mountain but you won’t be far from a road.

  6. If you trespass on private property, especially in the country side there could be a “misunderstanding” that could lead to serious injury or death. Farmers don’t mess around if they feel threatened in any way. It has happened many times before.

  7. Reminds me of the Bear Grylls episode lost in Ireland, I think at one point he was behind a hotel carpark.

  9. I’d recommend the Slieve Bloom Way. Familiarise yourself with the concept of “Leave no Trace” and people generally dont care if you are hiking around the place. If you start lighting fires, blasting music or chopping down trees you’ll find you wont be as welcome.

    This couple have done a lot of the waymarked trails and ways of Ireland and have some great advice on how to hike and wild camp here.

    https://youtu.be/-dXv6c8PCLM

  10. You should be fine, just as long as you don’t hear a loud siren followed by and announcement “We have a runner in sector 3!”

  11. Well it might be a dream to live out in the wilderness, but thanks to The UK turning Ireland into a food making machine for hundreds of years, there are very few proper wilderness area’s you could to get lost in like all Ireland the ancient forest are gone.

    If you thinking about roaming into peoples fields ask the farmers permission first, close gates behind you and don’t roam or bring a dog through fields with livestock as that is a good way to either have a Garda called if the farmer is nice or in hospital getting buckshot picked out your arse or worse the Farmer will shoot your dog for your stupidity as you put their livestock in danger and/or stressing them out.

    So many ignorant Townies do all the above and wonder why they end up on the bad side of a farmer.

  14. We ain’t got no wildernesses. Everything is tamed.

    Thanks to plantation, and the furious efficiency of the British, all land in Ireland is owned. Wherever you may wander, you’re on someone’s land, land that’s named and mapped and registered and covenanted and catalogued. Even areas around national parks, that look wild, are owned farmland.

    That being said, you can “wild camp” in a lot of places. I’d always ask the landowner, if I can find them. You never know what they have planned for tomorrow. You don’t want to wake up in the morning to find they’ve moved cattle into the field you’re camped in, or are spreading slurry!
    https://osi.ie/blog/irelands-best-wild-camping-spots/

    I’d love to canoe camp around the lakes in Cavan and Leitrim. Exploring around by day, sleeping on the foreshore. That’d be pretty close to wilderness.

  16. Everyone here saying there’s no wilderness is a bit off base here. You don’t need that much to feel you’re in the wilds.

    It’s no Alaska but head out to the mountains around Killarney and you can easily spend a few days walking and setting camp somewhere new each night never being anywhere near a town or road.

  17. We don’t have so much wilderness here, despite some international reputation for nature. We have a very large rural population by developed standards, so there’s loads of one-off housing dotted all over the place. A large amount of land is used for agriculture and we have very low forest cover. By contrast, other not-so-dense nations in Europe like Sweden and Finland have much higher urbanisation rates, so the rural areas are left much “wilder”.

  21. “Right to roam” generally applies to the right to travel across privately owned lands, which doesn’t exist in Ireland at all. There are plenty of public trails and walking routes, however, and [National Parks and various nature reserves](https://www.npws.ie/) which are largely undeveloped and often have walking trails (many different trails, in the case of the parks).

    Other than these, though, and the odd rugged mountainous areas which are unsuitable for any agricultural use or development, Ireland has very little true “wilderness” to speak of. It’s certainly possible to get yourself lost to the point where you’re in danger in some areas, especially with the unpredictable weather, and foolish folks certainly do just that from time to time, but there aren’t any vast swathes of untamed wilderness where you’re literally miles and miles from any sign of civilisation.

    If you do want to do any long-range hiking or hill-walking or whatnot here, feel free, but just make sure you’re properly equipped and pick a location and route that matches your skill level, and take all the usual precautions such as telling someone where you’ll be and when you expect to be back.

  22. There isn’t much wilderness in Ireland, most of its privately owned farmland and some commercial forestry that isn’t always welcome to wanderers

  24. I go wherever. I’ve camped and hiked in the woods and mountains and beaches plenty of times. Just don’t leave a mess and I think you’ll be fine. Not much public land in Ireland tho unfortunately but that doesn’t stop me.

  25. Terrible idea in Ireland. Chances are the land is owned by a farmer which leaves him liable if you get hurt on the land. If you don’t get hurt but get caught you will be fined for trespassing. But a cool idea.

  26. Stick to the coastline we have plenty of that, and no one owns the beaches, there’s plenty of coastal areas which are also forested and mountainous

  27. I don’t think we technically have a ‘trespassing’ law on the books. I’m pretty sure it’s only an offence if you refuse to leave after being told to do so. Simply being there isn’t an offence. But if the landowner asks you to leave and you refuse, then you can get the Garda called on you. Someone correct me if I’m wrong, I’m just going off of memory. This applies for privately owned land, which happens to be the majority of land in Ireland.

    If you’re in a National Park you’re allowed to camp freely in the boundaries of the park, but technically making fires is not permitted (though people do it anyway).

    I’ve even camped in Coilte forests (which is technically not allowed), workers have seen me and said hello and moved on. Generally if you’re not being a cunt and aren’t leaving a mess, people don’t care.

    If you’re asked to leave, just do it. Though I personally wouldn’t take the risk of camping on a farmers land without asking their permission first in case they’re some trigger happy nutter.

  29. As a Lithuanian I was a bit surprised that land owners can block access to lakes. Lough Derravaragh just outside Mullingar has a huge plot of land behind a fence.

  30. Yes. You have no right to just enter someone’s private property without permission.

    As with most things in Ireland, the laws are incredibly landowner focused at the expense of greater society. Much more so than most other parts of Europe. Even england has rights-of-way. [And no, we can’t blame this on “ze british” as some suggest here. Well, not directly. It’s FFG that have chosen to be Tory like in their attitudes].

    To be fair, important to remember, while most of Ireland looks green and lovely, it’s as about as far as from a wilderness as you can get. At any time most of it is growing something for profit. Closer to a factory that way. No factory owner is happily allowing random visitors through their factory floor. While farmers can be curmudgeons, I don’t think many here would be different in attitude to random strangers in the next years harvest.

    However, that doesn’t matter in practice. There are enough National parks and long distance trails to get away fully from the world. Check out for example the Wicklow Way. A good first step is doing a loop walk of a few hours in any national park. The routes are easy to follow and well marked. Then work your way up to doing less well marked routes. Maybe camp at a paid camp site a few times. And finally do the longer distance multi day wild camping routes like the Wicklow or Sleigh Bloom Way.

    And yes, you should have done this ages ago.

  31. People saying Ireland isn’t remote which is ture but if your on a mountains it’s very easy to lose your bearings, national parks are pretty open and easy to camp in just bring your trash with you. Yeah

  32. Most farms are small in Ireland and Farmers don’t take kindly to strangers on their land. From their point of view you could be looking to steal from them, which is common occurence with a certain demographic. As well as that, you will probably scare a farmers wife or children if they are home alone and see a stranger on their land. Just speaking from experience. Its equivalent to a stranger in your garden.

    You should definitely look into some of our national parks. Glendalough in the wicklow mountains is nice, so is slieve donard in the mournes and Killarney national park.

  34. Irelands kinda too small and rural. Like you can see some great nature but like you’re never completely alone. Like no matter how lost you could possibly get, you’re never more than like an hour or two walk away from somewhere. May not be a big city but there’ll be something

  36. You can do that everywhere in Ireland.

    Certainly, you can be nowhere metaphorically if not literally, after a lot of effort.

  37. Hell I got lost in Limerick on my honeymoon and the bartender at the pub we wandered into told us we were about 3 blocks away from probably being stabbed. Who says you need to go into the wilderness to get some adventure?

  38. Well, there is no real wilderness in Ireland, and don’t anyone mention that crappy nephin bog in Mayo to me. Our forests are garbage coilte monoculture plantations, and nature’s biggest enemy is the “stewards of the land” the farmers, who will suffer no wilderness or wild creature to live.

  39. You mention driving. Ireland has one of the highest concentration of roads in Europe, and many of those roads are absolutely tiny, two cars low swing have to pull in to pass, and you might not see another car on the road. So in that sense, yes you can easily ‘get lost’ on a remote road. If you are walking, there are many parks and mountains, beaches, walks, other lands you can ‘get lost’ on, where you can walk and there will be few other people around. .

  40. What wilderness is left in ireland ? Killarney national park is all i can think of and youre never anymore than 200m away from a house or another person even there. I suppose you could wander around the burren for a while if youre into rocks

  41. I was once doing fieldwork in the arse end of nowhere, Connemara, and didn’t realise that Ireland didn’t have the right to roam- took my headphones out to hear a farmer with a gun screaming something I couldn’t understand, but I got the hint

  42. If you don’t mind swimming the whole time there is plenty of ocean to get properly lost in, ideally head west from the west coast and it should be nice and empty 👍😉

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