The higherland is a beautiful place to get out and explore, mysterious and majestic mountains, a rolyed cliffs battered by the elements, lovely late lands, landscapes, valleys and shores. These places pull on our inner primitive desires to be out and saturate ourselves in nature. For beginner hikers however, these places can seem both daunting and intimidating. Hey how you doing? I hope you're all well and as you can see... Woo! Yeah, thank you ligaments. So hiking is becoming more and more popular as more and more new people get into it. So these are my top five tips to get out there hiking in Ireland. So these tips really are just for beginners and people who are starting off and please do listen you might find something interesting but if you have more experience than this video probably isn't for you. Kind of sound like that really annoying dental act you get at the start of YouTube videos. If you don't have a perfect straight teeth, click away now. Anyway, anyway, anyway moving on, moving on, moving on. Let's begin with number one. Keep it short, keep it small. You know find a small loop trail, a small track, small hills, you know, start off easy and then start building yourself up. Any place in Ireland that I've been, I've always encountered small coit-chafarst tracks, loop trails, lovely walk. Find those small tracks and trails and walk them. Build up your fitness, build up your confidence. If you do want to head to the hills and the mountains, just find something small. Like an ideal one that's close to me is diamond hill. It's about 400 and something meters but it kind of gives you a taste of what's to come. Now if you are pushed for the mountains, I would recommend sticking with ones that have well worn paths that likes crop Patrick but with a caveat. Crop Patrick can be quite a dangerous mountain. You know do a little research, do a little digging around, see what's in your local area. One fantastic resource I found when I was starting out was mailwalks. I, number two, don't spend a fortune buying gear. Hiking gear can be expensive and for very good reason if you get stuck out in the middle of nowhere and you have to spend a number of hours out waiting for somebody to help you or rescue you, you are going to get cold. Good quality hiking gear is designed to potentially save your life in those situations. However when you're starting out, there's no reason whatsoever that you should go out spending hundreds of yours on hiking gear to kick yourself out, hit the trails. Find out you don't actually like it. When I started hiking, I didn't really have the dash to throw around. What I did do was I got myself reasonably priced pair of decent hiking boots. I got a decent rain jacket from Port West but I got my pike and shirts, pike and trousers, hiking bag all from little. They're cheap and cheerful but they did the job. The most important thing that you need to worry about when you're starting out is how comfortable you are and whether or not you're adequately clothed for an extended period like if you're walking out in country lanes or forest tracks like runners are going to be totally fine as you progress and want more challenges and find more technically difficult hikes, then start upgrading your gear, then start putting money into it because you know at this stage that it's something you'll enjoy and you want to continue to do. One little tip that I give you is wait to the end of the season sales. If you have a thing about hiking for me it is it's not about fashion, it's about practicality and the thing that you buy at the end of a season for 25% cheaper will still be able to use the next year and if you keep doing that then you'll be able to accumulate decent hiking gear at quite a reduced cost. Number three the right gear for the right conditions. Everyone living in Ireland realizes that you can get five different types of weather in the space of two hours. So on a looper trail I would recommend hiking shoes or runners depending on the trail. If you're walking on mainly wooded paths then you won't necessarily need the hiking shoes but some loop trails are a bit more mucky or hiking shoes would be really good. You can go for hiking boots but I think hiking shoes do the job. Make sure you bring some comfy clothes, a rain jack is vitally important. Also it's handy to have a bag so you can put your water on your snacks in with you on small tracks and loop trails you're not going to be out for that long so you don't really need that much stuff. What you bring up the mountains can vary depending on the weather also. I normally bring hiking boots but I can also bring hiking shoes. If I'm hitting crop Patrick or maybe even diamond hilded and I just bring my hiking shoes because they weigh less and they're not as bulky. A quite important thing for the mountains that I have found is it gets yourself a decent pair of hiking socks. This can really reduce the chance of getting blisters comfy synthetics. Should you be up in the mountains you get hit with the downpour the last thing you want to be wearing are cuttons and jeans. The rain will soak into the clothing and make your clothes heavier. Extra layers are really really important particularly for when you get to the top. The higher you go up the colder it's going to get and if you stay at the top for about 10-15 minutes then your body temperature will drop. The rain jacket is really really important especially if you get hit with a shower. I normally get away with wearing water resistant trousers. I find them quite good and they dry really really quickly. So you don't necessarily need waterproof trousers. Make sure you bring a bag to carry everything. Something that I found very very useful and relatively cheap are dry bags. They're excellent at keeping things dry like you're foreign any other electrical equipment. Number four. High-cut your own pace, take your time, soak it in and enjoy. This might seem like an obvious one but it took me quite a while to figure it out and I see quite a lot of other people doing the same thing. When I started out I had this mentality of getting from A to B as quickly as possible. I even timed myself to see how fast I've done it but the silly thing is like who was like racing? To me that would doesn't make sense but back then I just got caught up into the A to B. A lot of the time we're out there to get out into nature clear the head and it doesn't really make sense to go smash it out as fast as possible but at the same time if you're going from A to B as soon as possible you're only going back to what you tried to get away from faster. As I said it took me quite a while to figure this out and now that I have figured it out I take a lot more time. I find a spot I'll sit down I just look out. Might have a cup of tea or something. For anybody that's interested the person for me who personifies this more than anyone is Irish Hikes at Alan who you can find on Instagram and he does it quite beautifully and is someone I definitely think you should check out. So just take your time and embrace the fact that you're outdoors and you're in nature and just soak it up as much as possible. Number five leave no trace. We are so lucky in Ireland to be blessed with beautiful scenery and stunning landscapes and we need to do everything that we can to help protect that. When I head out hiking on an adventure I want to experience this place in all its pristine beauty but yet I don't know how many times I've got annoyed by people discarding their rubbish it becomes extremely disheartening and very disrespectful to nature itself. Now listen I'm not trying to proselytize anyone. A lot of people that that leaf stuff behind more often not are more uneducated in the leave no trace principle and a lot of people actually haven't heard of it. Some of them in culprits I spot when I'm out walking are wrappers, drinks bottles, banana skins, peelings of orange left over apples that sort of stuff. I know what you might be thinking but they buy a degrade but it takes a banana skin two years to buy a degrade. Now just think about that if everybody is just firing out banana skins as they're walking it becomes more popular. All that's going to happen is you're going to go out there and you're going to see banana skins everywhere you're going to see litter everywhere. Take Ben Nevis for example and one weekend in 2019 they took off the just off the summit 8 kgs of just banana skins, not the actual bananas themselves but the banana skins. They take a colossal amount of banana skins off that mountain every year but if people just took their rubbish with them that wouldn't need to happen. So please please please respect the beauty of nature and whatever you bring out take back with you. Now if you are interested to find out more about leave no trace I will leave a link in the description below that you can check out and you can check out their seven principles to leave no trace. So that's it from my top five tips for beginner hikers in Ireland. If you feel that I've left something out please leave it in the comments below because it's always good for new hikers to see more information and any bit of information that you have or any advice that you have would be absolutely fantastic for people to read. So throw at the comments below. Hey, stop it, stop that. Sorry Luna just making loads of noise and trying to ruin my video. Come here and help me save my video Luna. Make it cute again. Come on. Sorry, Luna wanted to say hello and Luna also wants you to subscribe to my channel if you found this useful. Check out my if you found what you saw useful. I do have a coffee page and if you fancy buying me a beer from my efforts I know Luna would love a beer as well. You can check out my social media channels, mountain mics, adventures. Have a wonderful time guys. Happy hiking, stay safe and take care of yourself. See you good bye later. See you. No. She's gone. Thank you so much to everybody who supported me on my coffee thus far and I want to give a special shout out to Karen Lang, Ellie Berry and on us. Guys, you're bloody awesome.