The Story of Walking Ireland’s Wild Atlantic Coast

Ireland’s west coast is a playground of bays, cliffs and beaches, running for over 2,500 kilometres from Cork to Donegal. The Wild Atlantic Way links it all together—passing rocky points, dramatic seascapes, tiny villages, and big stretches where land and sea wrestle for control.

Wild Atlantic Women is the story of a second-generation London Irishman who walks the Wild Atlantic way, in the footsteps of 11 pioneering women.

The journey begins with the author’s own great-grandmother (a lacemaker on Cape Clear Island (just off Cork, the southern most inhabited place on the Emerald Isle).

At a crossroads in her life, Gráinne sets out to travel Ireland’s west coast on foot. Walking through history, her journey reveals unexpected insight into travelling alone as a woman, the trappings of an ‘ideal life’ and emigrant identity. All against the backdrop and power of this great ocean.

Gráinne Lyons is a writer and documentary maker from London, whose Irish parents still live on the Emerald Isle. She holds an MA in Creative and Life Writing and a BA in English Literature.