EastWest Mapping

19/10/2026

Ring Barking
https://eastwestmapping.ie/ring-barking/
I wrote a couple of weeks ago about Coillte using continuous cover forestry practice to manage a plantation. Apart from selectively removing larger spruce trees, other spruce have also been ring barked. The purpose of this appears to be to provide dead standing wood in time. This to provide a habitat for various fungi, insects and creatures including woodpeckers which have become common in the area. The latter have been damaging wooden ESB and telecom poles, so these spruce will offer some alternative habitat. In time they will fall but are located away from where they might cause damage. So keep an eye out and you may spot similar practice in other Coillte forests.

Ring Barking I wrote a couple of weeks ago about Coillte using continuous cover forestry practice to manage a plantation. Apart from selectively removing larger spruce trees, other spruce have also been ring barked. The purpose of this appears to be to provide dead standing wood in time. This to pro...

12/10/2026

Hiiker and Other Updates
https://eastwestmapping.ie/hiiker-and-other-updates/
This to advise that our annual round of updates to EastWest Mapping mapping on the Hiiker phone app has been completed recently. You need a Pro+ subscription on Hiiker to view and use our mapping. So we have two broad schedules for updating maps. The first is as above, an approx annual cycle where we update any matters reported during the previous year by map users or that have come to our attention in other ways.

Secondly, when our print maps need a reprint we do a more thorough trawl and examination of detail in the area covered. The time interval varies by area, some sheets have needed a reprint after three years but others last up to ten or eleven years. Indeed some may never reach a second edition.

If there are any important updates, then I post them here on the website and social media in the form of map extracts. I’m sometimes surprised in the more thorough check to make discoveries of detail that has changed substantially. So if you notice anything awry with our mapping, then do drop me a note. That’ll help with the annual update 😊

Hiiker and Other Updates This to advise that our annual round of updates to EastWest Mapping mapping on the Hiiker phone app has been completed recently. You need a Pro+ subscription on Hiiker to view and use our mapping. So we have two broad schedules for updating maps. The first is as above, an ap...

05/10/2026

Continuous Cover Forestry

I like trees, I spend a good bit of time in forests and woods, checking features for our own maps and also for walking trail signage for local communities and Coillte. All sorts of woods ~ conifer plantations, mixed and deciduous woodlands.

I have my reservations about large plantations and the loss of a sense of local culture attached to the former landscape. Some plantations are most unsuited to their sites, both aesthetically and commercially. Many others are fine. But I understand the need for both lumber for our construction industry and trees as a carbon sink and to manage drainage. I appreciate that state woodlands have an ‘open forest’ policy which is good for public access in many places and for healthy exercise.

I see a lot of negative commentary on social media these days as regards forestry. That conifer trees are an abomination, should be cut down and replaced with ‘native trees’, that all deer should be culled or excluded with high fencing, that farmland should be converted to rainforests and so on. Well this is not going to happen in that way. What is happening is that ‘disadvantaged land’ is and will naturally generate scrub and then forest through a process of neglect – this is the real vector and I see it my mapping work.

As for state plantations, we live opposite a Coillte forest and know it well. This was an estate woodland in 1800 and likely long before, went into state ownership after independence and stayed in deciduous wood till about 1950, whence most of the oaks were felled. Replanted with a conifer crop that matured and was clear felled in 1992/3. Replanted with Douglas Fir and Sitka Spruce but with many pockets of ‘native trees’ through natural reseeding from it’s past history. Supports all the usual Irish woodland mammals including some deer and a range of birds inc more recently buzzards and woodpeckers. It’s being managed now by Coillte as Continuous Cover Forestry, they are removing selected larger conifer trees, mostly spruce and leaving the fir to mature. In time I guess they’ll be back to remove the mature Douglas Fir etc. But otherwise the trees including the‘native trees’ will be left to self seed and do as they wish, with the plantation slowly reverting back to a mixed woodland. I think it’s a very laudable policy by Coillte, it costs more to manage a wood like this and takes a long time. But it’s far more practical than some of the well meaning but wishy washy rewilding stuff for large tracts of land that you hear.
https://eastwestmapping.ie/continuous-cover-forestry/

Continuous Cover Forestry I like trees, I spend a good bit of time in forests and woods, checking features for our own maps and also for walking trail signage for local communities and Coillte. All sorts of woods ~ conifer plantations, mixed and deciduous woodlands. I have my reservations about larg...

01/10/2026

⚠️ Slieve Bloom Trail Closures: Sunday 4th October 2026

Several walking trails will be closed to public access to facilitate the Laois Forestry Rally.

Closures affect routes around Glenbarrow, Clonaslee and Cadamstown, including sections of the Slieve Bloom Way. Please check the full list on the pictured notice before planning your walk, respect closure signs and choose an alternative route.

Thank you for your cooperation.

29/09/2026

Cognitive Surrender
https://eastwestmapping.ie/cognitive-surrender/
I heard this term ‘cognitive surrender’ on the radio, it was in the context of students using AI at third level to help with assignments and not fully figuring things out for themselves, not thinking through all the steps.

But it applies just as readily to finding your way these days as so many of us now reach for navigation apps and sat nav, even for journeys that we know well enough. Whether it’s road navigation using GoogleMaps, Waze or AppleMaps etc or off road navigation using Hiiker, AllTrails & OutdoorActive – people are just not using their brains, memory and logic the way they used to. We are surrendering these functions to technology.

The growing reliance on such apps is extraordinary in everyday road navigation, of course people will say that the apps give warnings about heavy traffic, speed bumps and cameras etc. But they are also distracting from a safety point of view, one should be able to read the road & traffic ahead and adjust speed, change gear and so on.

But it’s the ability and/or the confidence to navigate that I believe is rapidly declining. I can fairly confidently drive towards most places in the Republic anyway without recourse to GoogleMaps. That is to the nearest substantial town, and whereas previously I’d pull out a road map to check the final approach, now I’d stop and turn on the sat nav. Doing this exercises your brain and you are using your memory of the country and the relationship between the towns and main roads to get you close to your destination.

By overelying on satnav all the time, the public are losing this basic skill, it’s cognitive surrender. Resist it and turn off the sat nav, unless it’s really necessary! Use it or lose it as they say.

Cognitive Surrender I heard this term ‘cognitive surrender’ on the radio, it was in the context of students using AI at third level to help with assignments and not fully figuring things out for themselves, not thinking through all the steps. But it applies just as readily to finding your way th...

21/09/2026

Comeragh Map Update ~ Again
https://eastwestmapping.ie/comeragh-map-update-again/
I’ve been advised of a further forest road extension and new concrete bridge below the Boolas. This update here concerns our popular Comeragh 1:25,000 scale map and replaces the update I issued two weeks ago. If you use this map, no harm to take note as could be handy.

Comeragh Map Update ~ Again I’ve been advised of a further forest road extension and new concrete bridge below the Boolas. This update here concerns our popular Comeragh 1:25,000 scale map and replaces the update I issued two weeks ago. If you use this map, no harm to take note as could be handy. ...

19/09/2026

Coming up in Carlow/ Wexford and get your detailed map at https://eastwestmapping.ie/product/blackstairs-mount-leinster/ 🙂

10.5km guided mountain walk | Saturday, 3 October | €30

16/09/2026

Coming up this weekend and may be of interest to anyone local to the Galtees.

14/09/2026

Pathless Land ~ Countrywide
https://eastwestmapping.ie/pathless-land-countrywide/
Readers here may like to podcast the latest episode of ‘Countrywide’ on RTE Radio 1. Look up https://www.rte.ie/radio/radio1/countrywide/ and the programme of 11th September. It dealt with three topics: a English chap called Tim Hannigan who tried to walk off road from Di**le to Ards near Belfast and has written a book ‘The Pathless Land’. Secondly Greenways & how they affect farmers and costs associated with and lastly the SheepsHead Way down in Cork.

Hannigan’s view is that we should have a network of public paths as in England or other parts of Europe, that we never formalised the network of such paths & ways that once existed in Ireland. Whilst I agree it’d be better than nothing, I’d be a bit leery about the result of confining the public solely to such paths. There was no mention of an equally old tradition in Ireland of ‘walking the land’ – the concept that people could go where they will within reason, as long as they took responsibility for themselves and did no damage.

The second piece dealt with Greenways and the states response in a manner, to public access. How these Greenways can affect farming in places, compulsory purchase orders and the substantial costs of developing such tracks. There is no doubt but that a Greenway built to full spec is a pretty expensive process. Whereas in many places a simple walking path would only cost a small fraction of above and have less impact on farming. What is even harder to explain is the amount of money put into developing Greenways whilst traditional rights of way are largely ignored and even the few we have, often allowed to lapse in places. It’s a penny wise and pound foolish approach. And why are we so fixated currently on cycling routes? I’ve seen many miles of cycle path/ Greenway in Donegal running close to roads and not a sinner on them. Clearly some are well used whilst others are growing grass.

Lastly the Sheepshead Way featured where over two hundred landowners have agreed a permissive path / walk through their lands on old paths & trails which link sections of public road.

Pathless Land ~ Countrywide Readers here may like to podcast the latest episode of ‘Countrywide’ on RTE Radio 1. Look up https://www.rte.ie/radio/radio1/countrywide/ and the programme of 11th September. It dealt with three topics: a English chap called Tim Hannigan who tried to walk off road fro...

07/09/2026

Comeragh Map Update
https://eastwestmapping.ie/comeragh-map-update-4/
This update here concerns our popular Comeragh 1:25,000 scale map and is for a new forest road extension. This is Coillte forestry in Boolaclohy below The Gap and the Boolas on the Rathgormack side. If you use this map, no harm to take note as could be handy.

Comeragh Map Update This update here concerns our popular Comeragh 1:25,000 scale map and is for a new forest road extension. This is Coillte forestry in Boolaclohy below The Gap and the Boolas on the Rathgormack side. If you use this map, no harm to take note as could be handy.