How long is the ulster way

It could be considered the longest of Irelands National Waymarked Trails at approximately 1, km miles long but unfortunately it is not a continuous walk. Several long sections are busy road links which can only be completed by car or alternative transport.

The walking route officially begins and ends in Belfast but you can join the trail at any number of points along its length.

The Ulster Way comprises some great and well known waymarked walks in their own right including the Lagan Towpath in Belfast and the Causeway Coast Way among many others. Typically the entire route is broken down into 16 seperate walkings stages covering km and 10 road links. At 20km per day, these walks could be undertaken over 6 weeks but it is rare that the entire Ulster Way is attempted in one go.

A walker checks the map on Barnes Gap in the heart of the Sperrin Mountains. Splendid waterfalls can be visited while walking through the Glenariff Forest Park. It was time for a complete and detailed guidebook to the route, which measures an immense kilometres miles. The route research was accomplished in two visits, and proved to be considerably easier than a previous walk along the route, which was accomplished in a hefty month's walking in appalling weather.

The Ulster Way suffered from a policy of 'benign neglect' for many years, but has been re-launched and described as having 'quality' and 'link' sections. The intervening decades have been turbulent here, to say the least, and that the Ulster Way survived long enough to be reborn is remarkable.

But not as remarkable as its actual birth. Access to the countryside in general is much more restricted in Northern Ireland than in mainland Britain: there are no national parks, far fewer public rights of way, and land ownership is much more fragmented with a patchwork of smaller farms and estates. Consequently, most off-road walking routes depend on the goodwill of numerous private landowners and alliances with groups such as local councils and the National Trust.

Across this unpromising backdrop strode the intrepid, irrepressible Wilfrid Capper. Capper was a career civil servant but his greatest contribution to Northern Ireland was his passion for the countryside, and his voluntary work preserving and promoting it was decades ahead of the time and has proved priceless. His own love of rambling, aligned with his campaigning to protect the few areas of rural access that all Northern Ireland people could enjoy back then, merged into his vision for the Ulster Way.

It began after he walked the Pennine Way in , and took him more than 30 years to realise the dream. He almost single-handedly created what is one of the longest waymarked trails in the British Isles, first visiting, testing and mapping all the sections, then finding out who owned what and pleading with them to allow access. When his original route of miles was first formally unveiled as the Ulster Way in , he was the first to walk its entire length. He walked it all again more than a decade later at the age of Over the years, time and legislation caught up with much of the original route and some of the quiet country roads Capper tramped have become substantially busier and more dangerous.

The promotion of the Ulster Way is now managed by Walk NI, which this month unveiled the remapped and revamped route. Online there is a downloadable map and suggested itineraries with route descriptions, as well as a range of shorter walks that take in parts of the full route so it can be tackled in stages.