Peace reigns in the Pyrenees, where ramblers and property- owners coexist due to clear regulations, writes Ian Kilroy.

The Pyrenees will never be the Alps, whose sheer height and grandeur are all their own. But what the Pyrenees offer are peaks easily negotiated, dark caves where clear water has its source and great granite amphitheatres of stone, which lay largely undiscovered while the Romantic age followed its fascination with the Alps.

The great pioneers of the Pyrenees came only in the 19th century; before then the complex passes of the Franco-Spanish frontier were known only to smugglers and hunters.

Of those early pioneers, the generously named Count Henry Patrick Marie Russell-Killough played his own significant part. Born in Toulouse of a French mother and an Irish father, he was the first to scale many of the mountain range's peaks.

Before his death in 1909, he gained a reputation as probably the most eccentric champion of the Pyrenees, spending long periods living in hidden caves throughout the range, where he was known to hold extravagant dinner parties for a select circle of guests, and where he even had Mass celebrated at the edge of a glacier.

Russell was honoured with a statue after his death. Now he looks for ever towards the Vignemale, the peak that obsessed him throughout his life.

In the last 20 years the Pyrenees have really come into their own. The 400-odd kilometres of rock, stretching from the Mediterranean to the Atlantic, are no longer the Alps' poor relation, but rather a range worthy in its own right. More and more hill-walkers, botanists, bird-watchers, kayakers, rock-climbers and mountain-bikers are flocking to the Pyrenees than ever before. Where once people could wander at will, now vast areas of the range are tightly controlled.

The turning point came in 1967, when the French authorities designated about 100 kilometres of the range as the Parc National des Pyrénées (PNP), an officially protected area containing some of the range's finest peaks. The price of protecting the flora, fauna and landscape from the increasing numbers was a restriction in freedom of movement for walkers. Areas were designated off-limits to protect the wildlife and fines imposed on those that exceeded set limits, such as wandering into zones closed to the public, or picking plants and flowers within the PNP area. It's all organised and regulated in a typically French way, and has the benefit of protecting the environment while simultaneously allowing for the best peaks and areas to be fully enjoyed.

One result of this organisation and regulation has been an avoidance of the conflict between property-owners, farmers and the rambling and hill-walking communities. While in both Britain and Ireland there have been conflicts over access to the countryside, in the Pyrenees it has never really become a hot topic.

The vast size and elevation of the range offer ample uncultivated wilderness in which to roam; there are the well-defined roads and paths to gain access, from which walkers can follow an entire route to the end. Where Irish walkers often have to cross farms and private property on the lower slopes to gain access to the uplands and peaks, the French authorities have laid down roads and car-parks, right up to the setting-out point.

The fact that the Pyrenees are much higher than Irish hills and mountains also means that arable and grazing land are a great distance from the high valleys and gullies where walkers wish to tread.

Some of the seasoned walkers I spoke to in the Réserve d'Orlu, in the French Pyrénées Ariégeoises, said that access had never proved to be a problem for them. As Robert Dussert said, "Nobody owns the mountains. You don't get signs saying that you're entering private property here". He added, however, that increased charges were becoming unreasonable in some areas.

Étienne Delord, another seasoned walker in the Pyrenees, agrees that access has never really been a major problem. "Even through the few areas of private property you come across, the areas on the banks of rivers are considered public space," he says, "so you can go wherever you want if you follow the course of a river."

Delord agrees that, while true walkers have no objection to paying for certain facilities in PNP areas that help maintain the environment, some places have gone overboard on charges.

Climbing the Coume d'Or a few years ago, which lies outside a regulated area, was for me much more pleasant than treading the well-worn and controlled tracks of other Parc National routes. Another highlight of the Pyrenees for me was around the Étangs de Fontargente, near the border with Andora, where a long and dusty day's trek ended with a swim in the cool, still waters of a mountain lake - something you'd rarely experience in the colder Irish climate.

There's a Pyrenees for everyone. The more adventurous, and experienced, might consider the Haute Randonnée Pyrénéenne, a 45-day trek from the Atlantic to the Mediterranean, which largely follows the international frontier. The spiritual among you might consider part of the St-Jacques-de-Compostelle route, over the Basque mountains, from north to south. There are countless ways to experience this varied mountain range, far from farmers' barking dogs, barbed-wire fences and signs telling you to "keep off" someone's else's land.

This great European mountain range can teach us a lesson or two about when to regulate our wilderness, and how far to go.