IRELAND IS to be included in the Appalachian Trail for the first time. The original trail stretches from Georgia to Maine, a distance of 3,510km and was made famous in films including Deliveranceand the Bill Bryson book A Walk in the Woods.
An extension called the International Appalachian Trail (IAT) continues from Maine to the top of Newfoundland and is another 3,100km.
The IAT is now including a stretch of Ireland from Donegal to Antrim as part of the trail.
The Irish leg begins at the Slieve League cliffs in Co Donegal and proceeds eastwards along the Bluestacks Way and then the Ulster Way and finally the Causeway Coast Way terminating in Ballycastle, Co Antrim.
Though Newfoundland and Ireland are now separated by thousands of kilometres of ocean, they were once part of the same landmass.
The total length of the trail was created when several minor continents fused together to form one supercontinent Pangea, which included Europe, Greenland, North America and parts of north Africa. The collisions threw up mountain ranges on both sides of what is now the Atlantic from the Appalachians to the Bluestack Mountains in Donegal and the Atlas Mountains in Morocco.
