A 34-year-old man walked barefoot from Istanbul to Ireland and entered the Guinness Book of World Records

34-year-old man entered the Guinness Book of World Records by walking barefoot from Istanbul to Ireland

Imonn Keaveney, a 34-year-old resident of the Irish town of Claremorris, entered the Guinness Book of World Records by walking barefoot from Istanbul to Ireland.

Keaveney covered a distance of 6,805.8 km in 369 days, which is just over a year. He started his journey in Turkey and returned to his homeland of Ireland, passing through Bulgaria, Romania, Hungary, Austria, Germany, France, England, and Wales.

The Irish athlete first set a record in 2016 by walking a distance of 2,080.14 km barefoot. However, his result was later broken by Pawel Durakiewicz from Poland (3,409.75 km), so Keaveney began preparing for the next record. He regularly walked barefoot around Claremorris to adapt to the year-long journey and get used to the discomfort and calluses.

"Of course, my feet hurt a lot. Although the skin on my soles was quite thick, after days of walking on asphalt, they would get scraped and covered in dark blood. Thorns and glass shards would pierce my feet, and near the end of the journey, one of my feet became inflamed due to a thorny bush, and I couldn't walk for a whole week," he recalls.

In the summer, because the weather was very hot, he had to take breaks for 1-2 days, and in the winter, he had to stop walking due to the cold.

According to the traveler, people often looked at him with surprise, but overall, they were friendly. Sometimes, strangers invited him to their homes and supported him when he was in need of help.

"Before I even reached the first town and had a place to stay, a Turkish man invited me for coffee and breakfast, and introduced me to his daughter-in-law and grandchildren. Before I left, his grandson drew a map of the town, showing me where the hospital was," he said.

In addition to traveling on foot, in 2024, Keaveney set another unusual record — he traveled across the whole of Ireland on a unicycle in 5 days. At the time, he explained that he saw this as "the perfect combination of difficulty and absurdity" for himself.