ABOUT

Who?

Aoife, a mama of two small children passionate about the outdoors, being active as a family and doing my best to keep mentally and physically fit. I’m originally from and now living in Dublin, however since starting this project (in 2014) we have also lived in Meath and and Galway which has provided us ample opportunities to research all that these counties and surrounding areas have to offer.

Why?

Walking has always been a huge part of our life so when our first child was born five years ago we wanted to share this love with her. I also wanted to continue to enjoy the benefits of regular exercise on my physical, mental and emotional health. However the outdoors is a different place when walking with a buggy, so we soon realised that many of our favourite spots were inaccessible. When searching online for information on walks suitable for small wheels we learned that no such data exists. And so BuggyWalks Ireland was born. However as our little people grow and grow out of their buggies we have changed our name for the third and final time to FamilyWalks Ireland.

What?

We created this database to document accessible buggy-friendly family walks around Ireland as we discover them, providing descriptions of facilities and sights/landmarks etc. All of this is with a view to sharing them and encourage others to get out and be active together. The long term goal is to create an interactive website. Who knows maybe an app someday! Recently we added a parkrun tab to outline buggy-friendly parkruns (thanks to some very active mamas indeed).

To date…

So far we have documented over 150 walks across 25 counties completing many of these ourselves. We have had so many people contribute both via the website, email and mostly Instagram. Through day trips and holidays we hope to have a list of family-friendly and buggy friendly walks in each county in Ireland. The journey continues and hopefully with your help too. Check out the links below to see how you can get involved: