Villagers in Laragh in the Wicklow mountains are angry that they have been bypassed by a re-drawing of the Wicklow Way - the 132 km walking trail between counties Dublin and Carlow, planned over 40 years by legendary hill-walker J.B. Malone.
The National Way-Marked Ways Committee, which decides the route of the Wicklow Way, says the rerouting which took place earlier this year followed complaints from a local landowner.
But locals point out that the redrawn route, marked with arrows every few hundred yards, now takes walkers directly into the car-park of the Duchas-run visitors' centre at Glendalough.
They claim that tourists - many of whom come to Ireland to spend a week walking the route - are getting lost and that the redrawing of the route damages the business of bed-and-breakfast owners around the village.
Mr Mick Lynham, who operates a public house, accommodation and coffee shop in Laragh, says locals were not consulted about the change "which has been driving us silly for the last six months".
Mr Lynham - recently nominated as the sheep-farmers' representative on the new council of the Wicklow Mountains National Park - says he will raise the issue at the council, because of the "undemocratic" nature of the redrawing.
"There are people here who have gone through all the trials to get planning permission for a B&B - indigenous people - along the route who find the Wicklow Way has moved."
Mr Lynham says he feels it is significant that the altered route also passes by the newly-rebuilt 120-bedroom An Oige hostel at Glendalough, before arriving at the Visitors' Centre.
"This has been done by stealth and while I can't say that I have personally lost any business by it some people have and it is highhanded in the extreme to do this without any consultation," he said.
However, according to the National Way-Marked Ways Committee - part of the Sports Council - complaints were received from a business premises south of the village that walkers were leaving cars outside the premises all day.
Mr Joss Lynam, chairman of the committee, said it was faced with a difficulty in that a private landowner said he did not want the Wicklow Way and the committee had no option but to move it. He rejected suggestions that the Visitors' Centre would be facilitated by the move, pointing out that the route through Laragh along the "Green Road" - which takes walkers from the village to the lakes at Glendalough - passed within a few hundred yards of the centre.
A spokeswoman for An Oige said it had not asked for the change in the route but was nevertheless "delighted the Wicklow Way is coming by our state-ofthe-art centre". The Wicklow Way, Ireland's first way-marked trail, was officially opened in 1984, but its route was made up from a collection of mountain walks which had been enjoyed by hillwalkers for decades.
Pre-eminent among those hillwalkers was J.B. Malone, who laid out the route with Cospoir - the body which formerly had responsibility for way-marked trails. A monument to the memory of Mr Malone, who died in 1992, overlooks Lough Tay on the route of the Wicklow Way at Luggala, near Roundwood.
The route begins in Clonegal, Co Carlow, not far from the borders of counties Wexford and Wicklow and ends in Marlay Park in south Co Dublin. It can be walked in one week by the determined traveller.