Is this Ireland's most remote location?
A post by Redditor, DaveFlanagan, has asked an interesting question on reddit.
Listing a few criteria to determine the most remote point in the country, Dave surmised in his blog that a boggy hillside in the Nephin Beg mountains in Co. Mayo, fits the bill.
His criteria?
* Distance to the nearest road
* It has to be on the mainland, ie no islands
* It must be on land, ie anywhere in the middle of a lake doesn't count
The site is just under 8km from the nearest road, according to Dave, and lies close to two walking routes, the Bangor Trail and the Western Way.
Not bad when you compare the size of Ireland (around 70,000 square kilometres) to Alaska (more than 1.7 million square kilometres) and consider that the remotest place in Alaska is 45kms from a road, according to the University of Alaska Fairbanks.
Around 16,000 hectares (160 square kilometres) of the surrounding Mayo countryside recently became Ireland's first ever wilderness area, called Wild Nephin, meaning the bog and forest has been allowed to revert back to a natural state.
According to Coillte, it was once described as the “loneliest place in Ireland” by a man called Robert Lloyd Praeger who qualified his comment by saying that the loneliness was "not depressing but inspiring".
Can you think of somewhere in Ireland to beat it?
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