At 26, Becky Gilmour became the first person to skateboard the full length of the Wild Atlantic Way, the 2,500km coastal route that threads Ireland's west coast from the Inishowen Peninsula in Donegal down to Kinsale in County Cork. She finished in mid-December after six and a half months on the road, carrying a 15kg pack with her tent and supplies — and, now and then, tins of paint.
The challenge began with loss. A close friend of Gilmour's died by suicide during lockdown, and she couldn't attend the funeral. The two had skated together as teenagers around Portrush, so a long-distance skateboard trip felt like a fitting way to work through the grief. She started in June, expecting four to six months. Irish weather had other ideas: storms, ten-day stretches of damp kit, and hills with cumulative elevation nearly three times the height of Everest. She covered 20-60km a day, refused to walk a single hill, and crashed hard on a mountain before deciding to dial back the downhill bravado. She also detoured to coastal islands, reaching some by ferry, others on a hired paddleboard.
What stuck with her most wasn't the kilometres. Strangers offered to carry her bag to the next town, fed her, and gave her beds — especially welcome during winter, when she was fighting a chest infection. One woman who'd read about her in the local paper pulled over in tears; they'd both known suicide loss. In return, Gilmour, a former mural artist, painted murals in every county she passed through.
The ride raised £15,000 for Samaritans — by her maths, every £10 funds one potentially life-saving call. Within months she was off again, paddleboarding 1,000km solo across the width of Ireland for a psychiatric hospital in Uganda that had lost funding, with 1,200 patients and just two nurses. One day en route to Dublin meant portaging her board and kit through 13 locks.
Her message is refreshingly un-elitist: adventure isn't just for athletes with big budgets, and movement can be a genuine coping mechanism. For travellers, her route doubles as an offbeat guide to Ireland's west — she came back evangelising about places she'd barely known, including Lough Hyne in County Cork, a marine nature reserve where a local told her she'd 'wasted her trip' by not bringing goggles. Snorkelling there is now on her list.