A path timing detecting method and a base station are provided which can improve the accuracy of detecting the path timings and check an increase in the processing load in the random access in a mobile communications system. First, the method identifies the effective path timing range using a preamble (A), followed by detecting effective path timings in the identified path timing range at reception of a message (C), enabling the method to carry out detection of the path timings at accuracy higher than a conventional method that detects the paths using only the preamble. Besides, identifying the searching range at the reception of the preamble (A) makes it possible to reduce the processing load as compared with a method that detects the path timings from the entire searching range corresponding to a cell radius.