Despite the endorsement of Drew Barrymore, it has proven difficult to attract visitors to our rural walks, but there are signs that things are changing, writes John G O'Dwyer
There is no doubt that Irish tourism presently enjoys rude good health, with nearly eight million travellers from abroad crossing our shoreline last year. The health status of these visitors is less clear, however, for latterly they have become a rather inactive and "indoorsey" bunch.
Last year's declaration by film actress Drew Barrymore that she enjoys nothing better than romping au naturale through fields of Irish wheat would, on the face of it, seem likely to redress this. Mischievous Hollywood meets Vincent Van Gogh in an Irish cornfield with a little green exercise thrown in certainly appears the sure-fire image to drag even the most committed couch potatoes off their posteriors and into the Irish countryside.
To the undoubted disappointment of Tourism Ireland, however, this has not been happening. Barrymore's heroic efforts to stimulate our rural tourism industry have, so far, not been followed by the majority of visitors to Ireland.
By and large they remain resolutely indifferent to the uninhibited rompings of the former ET star and clothed or unclothed are refusing to follow where unconventional Drew is leading. Far from romping through the countryside they are becoming evermore content to forsake such pulse-raising activities in favour of the sedentary pleasures of our cities and towns.
More likely to be found on the summit of an urban bar stool than the summit of a mountain trail, our visitors have increasingly become focused on exploring the boozy wildness of Dublin's Temple Bar and suchlike, as opposed to the truer wildness of Co Mayo, Co Donegal or west Cork.
This wasn't always the case. There was a time when the heart of Irish tourism beat most strongly in the countryside and we looked set to become one of Europe's premier destinations for activity-based holidays. In 1993, one in 10 of our overseas visitors hiked or walked on their Irish holiday while a further one in eight took part in other countryside pastimes such as angling, cycling and horse-riding.
New waymarked walking routes and outdoor activity centres mushroomed during the 1990s and optimism abounded for the future of rural-based tourism.
Unfortunately, the walking routes we created to meet the demand for green recreation were not of uniform quality. Many trails were forced to tiptoe timidly around access flashpoints and, in true "sod's law" fashion, these problems often occurred near our most scenic locations.
The result was extensive loops of roadwalking on boot-burning bitumen, interspersed with gloomy trails beneath our most recent invading army - seemingly endless stands of Sitka spruce. By the late 1990s, it was clear that many Irish trails fell well short of international standards, and that combining trekking with traffic, tarmac and monoculture was never likely to prove a winner. Soon walkers were voting with their feet and heading for destinations offering superior and more accessible trails.
Then came foot-and-mouth disease. For several months, Ireland closed its doors to rural tourism and in many areas these doors simply never re-opened. While the UK rapidly returned to business with improved access, rumours abroad about Ireland continued to suggest a closed shop.
Activity-based holidays declined further, and by 2003 only about one overseas visitor in 40 was participating in hiking or walking-based activities, with other rural pastimes such as cycling and angling posting equally steep declines. Clearly Irish tourism was rapidly moving from the countryside and becoming largely an urban phenomenon.
MOVES HAVE, HOWEVER, recently been afoot to reverse this trend. Fáilte Ireland and the Irish Sports Council are now attempting to drag overseas and Irish holidaymakers alike from their barstools and open-top buses and back to sampling the breezy self-improvement associated with green exercise. Recreational opportunities in the Irish countryside are multiplying again.
Our 32 long-distance routes remain for committed hikers, but most of these are too long and demanding for casual walkers. Fáilte Ireland has, in response, developed a series of shorter looped walks that can be completed in a few hours and conveniently lead walkers back to their start point.
According to Mark Rowlette, a product manager with Fáilte Ireland, "The looped trails are predominately off-road and based around specific themes showing the best of Ireland's coastal, island, natural and mountain scenery. This year we will have 73 of them available for the more casual, lifestyle walker."
Aside from these new looped walks, there is also a series of heritage trails that follow ancient pilgrim paths, several towpath walkways along canal banks and a network of mainly urban Slí na Sláinte routes, aimed at improving the health status of the population.
And there are now some tentative signs that these initiatives are taking effect. Having reached a low point of 168,000 in 2003, the number of overseas walkers is edging upwards again - in 2006 we attracted 335,000 such footfalls, and on my own recent sojourns to the Irish uplands I have noticed a small but significant increase in encounters with overseas hikers.
While Rowlette accepts that the numbers for Ireland are still relatively small in comparison with activity holiday heavyweights such as Scotland and New Zealand, he is quick to point out that the trend is clearly upwards and that Fáilte Ireland expects this growth will be maintained when the figures for 2007 become available.
In November last year there was further good news with a breakthrough on the issue of access to private land. There is now agreement in principle that landowners will be offered annual payments of up to €3,000 for maintaining walkways routed through their land.
So is rural tourism about to walk its way back to happiness? Rowlette believes that the outlook is certainly positive. "Research indicates high visitor demand and considerable potential for further growth in the sector. If we can capitalise on this potential, the economic benefit for rural communities across Ireland will be significant."
JOHN HEALY, WHO works as a professional walking guide in Cork and Kerry, also believes that the number of domestic and overseas hikers to the Irish uplands is slowly increasing, but we still have some way to go in terms of getting out the message about what Ireland has to offer.
"Most Irish people have probably heard of the pilgrim route to Santiago de Compostela, but how many Spaniards have heard of the Kerry or Wicklow Ways?" he asks.
While welcoming the recent breakthrough with farmer representatives on walker access, he believes it is too early to say exactly what effect this will have for countryside access. "European walkers enjoy a virtually unrestricted right to roam and are used to hiking on designated paths. To compete we now need greater clarity on exactly where walkers are free to go, along with further improvements to the trail infrastructure," says Healy.
He is also convinced that when the access issue has been fully resolved, we will need an immediate investment and promotion campaign aimed at "overcoming the common misapprehension among Europeans that high-quality walking cannot be accessed in Ireland."
Gerry Greensmyth, who has been running Croagh Patrick Walking Holidays since 1993, deals mainly with the US market. He also believes the signs are positive for rural tourism, but has yet to see a follow-on increase in demand for walking holidays.
"While access is not a concern that is often mentioned by American visitors, the cost of living in Ireland and the weak dollar are major problems," says Greensmyth. He echoes John Healy's view that we require better-defined trails and more effort aimed at getting the message across that Ireland is a great destination for walkers. "Improving air connections directly into the west of Ireland is also important" he says.
Certainly the countryside has much to offer our holidaymakers but has recently been a neglected resource. There are now renewed grounds for optimism, but clearly it will take more than a risque intervention by a Hollywood star or a pilot programme on access for the countryside tourism to achieve its full potential.
Indeed, there is a widespread belief on the ground that the countryside will only fulfil its promise when there is a genuine acceptance of their interdependence among all rural dwellers. This was succinctly summed up some time ago by well-known archaeologist Michael Gibbons when he said "Walking through the Irish countryside encourages visitors to buy more Irish beef and butter when they return to their own countries."