After spending almost three years researching, travelling and taking photographs, Dublin-writer Ann Lane’s book was ready to publish in 2010.

Her preferred title was ‘Heavy Metal and Hard Rock’.

Groups like Led Zeppelin, Deep Purple and The Who travelled vast distances on concert-tours.

Ann covered over 16,000 miles, but the name of her book was changed from ‘Heavy Metal and Hard Rock’ to ‘By the Way’ - which was equally appropriate.

It was about statues and sculptures - mostly steel or stone - sited ubiquitously, and occasionally obscurely, near and around the highways and byways of the island of Ireland.

“Even I could see the problems that my preferred title might have caused in a Google search!” Ann told me.

Sub-titled ‘A Selection of Public Art in Ireland’ her 2010 book was adorned with 760 photographs of, and essential facts about, sculptures sited beside or near roads, roundabouts and buildings.

Others were in fields, atop hills, under trees, on pavements, in village squares, city centres and public parks.

But Ann knew that there were many hundreds of other works that her 350-page book couldn’t include.

Her second book has just been published - ‘By the Way 2’ - almost 400 pages containing 1,050 installations, which Ann drove almost 22,000 miles over two years to photograph!

From Millstreet Town, County Cork, Ann has lived and worked in Dublin for most of her life, as personal assistant to former President of Ireland Mary Robinson, and to three Attorney’s General and a Senator.

Meanwhile she photographed random art installations all around Ireland and on her numerous mountain-climbing, trekking, motorbiking, driving and sea-going expeditions all around the globe including the North and South Polar regions, Mount Everest and Kilimanjaro, Route 66, China’s Great Wall and Peru’s Inca Trail.

“The idea for that first book came from a calendar of photographs of roadside sculptures in Cork that my sister gave me many years ago,” she told me, adding “I was so taken with the pieces that I wanted to see them.”

“We must all be very grateful to Ann Lane for assembling this marvellous index of sculptures,” said Ireland’s President, Michael D. Higgins, at the launch of ‘By the Way 2’ last year in Dublin’s Royal Irish Academy.

Having also written its foreword, the President commended her book for providing “a new perspective on our native landscape and our journeys through it.”

From amongst the sculpted pieces that she’s compiled in her second book I gleaned Ann’s personal favourites.

One called ‘Growing Together’ is in the Larganess Centre, Florencecourt, Enniskillen.

Her explanatory notes outline its inspiration - the famous Florencecourt yew tree planted nearby in the 1700s, a sapling from Cuilcagh Mountain.

“It’s still growing today,” Ann told me.

“It’s referred to as the Mother Tree and it’s believed that most of the Irish yew trees grown in churchyards all over the world came from this one tree.”

Other Fermanagh installations include the carved railway-sleeper figures ‘Waiting’ on Brookeborough’s old Train Station platform, the Carrosyl For Peace on the communal lawn at Carrowshee Park and Sylvan Hill in Lisnaskea and sculptor Holger Lonze’s carved wooden signpost ‘All Hell by Topped’s Gate’, on Topped Mountain near Garvary.

Lonze also worked with Topped’s Community Association and local artists on the miniature Bronze-age bells in the grounds of Coolbuck Church, vividly detailed in four of Ann’s photos.

Every sculpture tells a story and history unfolds on every page, all over Ireland - memorable people from days of yore, ancient myths and fables, significant events from the past, commemoration, expectation and celebration.

All depicted by eye-catching artworks of all shapes, sizes and styles, photographed and catalogued by province, by county and by specific locality.

My own favourite speaks of great tragedy and sadness - the Armagh Rail Disaster sculpture by Rory Breslin, of a little barefoot girl with a bucket and spade, in Armagh’s Mall.

The bronze and limestone piece commemorates the 1889 rail disaster when a local Sunday-school excursion-train stalled while attempting to negotiate a steep incline.

It was packed with children and as the rear portion of the train rolled back down it collided with another train.

Altogether 80 people died and 260 were injured, about a third of them children.

“As well as recording the sculptures,” Ann told me “I also had another reason for doing the project - this country! There will never be a time in my life when I might become jaded by the people, the atmosphere, and most particularly the landscape that surrounds us…the more I saw the more I was reminded of what a stunningly beautiful place I am lucky enough to spend my life in.”

‘By the Way 2’ by Ann Lane is published by Wordwell Books at www.wordwellbooks.com