The Way That I Went

Written by Ireland's greatest field botanist and first published in 1937, Robert Praeger's personal tour of Ireland's natural wonders has had a greater influence on Irish naturalists than any other book. It represents five years of weekends spent walking the countryside (some 5,000 miles), swimming through flooded caverns, staying out all night on islands, sifting fossil bones, and exploring cattle-tramped tombs. That was when conservation was still in the future, farmers welcomed rambling strangers, bogs were intact, bungalows, cars, ESB poles and chainsaws were absent, and the countryside was largely tourist-free. Praeger's journey becan in Donegal and ended in Kerry. Along the way he discovered much, including the passage tombs of Carrowkeel in Sligo, which he was the first to enter. The Way that I Went is an absolute must for lovers of natural history.