What Was Your First Big Trip?

I ’m going to expand this topic, which was suggested by StoryWorth, to include a number of trips progressively!

The first one that is documented with a photograph (black and white of course, before the advent of colour photography) is a shy Dermot crouching behind me as we walk down O’Connell Street in Dublin. This was probably 1952 when we were 4 and 6.

We used to rent a cottage by the sea in Bettystown, for the month of August every year. Everybody decamped there, while my father commuted up and down to Dublin (about 30 miles) to his office. There was just a dirt track between the cottage and the beach. There were tennis courts associated with the local golf club and this is where I got my start playing tennis, with increasing seriousness. Ultimately, I played tennis every summer in both a local club in Dublin and in Bettystown. I was good enough to compete in the Irish Junior championships and would normally progress through three rounds. In my own club I won a number of championships over a couple of years and my trophies took up some space on top of the piano in the sitting room.

Regarding my father, I remember one year when I was playing for the Tennis Club’s Boys’ Championship, I saw him at the back of the crowd of onlookers; but after I had won, he had disappeared. He never said a word about having been there.

Anyway, I played tennis seriously until I was sixteen, after which I spent my summers in England, which put an end to my tennis career.

We were encouraged to bring a friend or someone who my mother felt would benefit from “the fresh sea air” to Bettystown.

John Cassidy, Mary Cassidy’s younger brother, came and brought his motor scooter and taught me to ride. This was definitely an adventure and started my love for power on two wheels!

The first travels that would really qualify as an adventure came in the summer of 1993 when I was seventeen. Somehow or other, the kids in school (or some of them) had learned that you could go to England to work for the summer on pea harvesting, and earn significant sums (£250.). I was allowed to go, unaccompanied. This involved a boat trip of three hours from Dublin to Holyhead in Wales, then a long train journey through the night to a change in the middle of England at a place called Crewe. There was one other kid on the platform at 5 in the morning. It was John Sheridan, a dental student and son of the famous Irish author John D Sheridan. We travelled on together and have been friends ever since.

Working the pea business was really hard, using a pitchfork to hoist big, heavy bundles of peas and their vines, up onto a chute.

My hands were blistered and callused for weeks. But I survived, and together with the other Irish lads, and some English, would walk a couple of miles in the evenings to the one local pub where I learned to drink pints. There were some notable people who worked the summer pea business, Colm O’Donnell (son of the aforementioned Peadar, a famous radical Irish revolutionary), Gerry Collins, later an Irish Foreign Minister and Christy Moore, who became the lead singer of the group Planxty.

The summer working in England was certainly educational in many, many ways. It taught independence, social awareness and more besides. One of the summers we must have been short of work because a number of us ended up working on the construction of a nuclear power station, Sizewell B, located in Suffolk on the east coast of England.

Our job was in the condenser section underground which involved threading very long pipes through very large metal plates, which had pre-drilled holes in them. One of our gang soon discovered that if you pushed the pipes very hard they would clang up against the plate instead of going through the targeted hole. This expanded the end of the pipe and prevented it from going further either forward or backward. The supervisor was then called and while the issue was sorted we sat in the condenser and played cards. I’m ashamed to say we repeated this ploy a number of times.

Then, in the summer of 1964, at the end of high school, Colum Murphy from my class, who was also working the peas, asked me to go with him to see Istanbul. He was convinced we could do this with very little money because of all the fruits “that were just hanging from the trees.” We flew in some small puddle jumper from somewhere in the south of England to Brindisi in southern Italy. For some reason, the pilot couldn’t land the plane so twice we approached the runway, only to rev up and overfly it.

This was the only time I’ve been in that situation and it was no fun. On the boat from there to Athens we slept on deck, having no money for a cabin. One of the entertaining moments on the passage was when we were talking to a middle-aged American who, when we said we were excited to see the Parthenon in Athens said “Ah, when you’ve seen one pile of rocks, you’ve seen ‘em all”. From Athens we went on a ferry to Istanbul, via Izmir.

On the approach to Istanbul some dude asked us if we would take a parcel ashore for him. We were young, but not foolish. I don’t know what happened to his drugs. In Istanbul, we slept on the beach. I don’t remember us having sleeping bags. A couple of vignettes: some teenage girls used to come by our “beach home” every day. As best I can tell they thought Murphy was James Dean, or so they said. Another incident was when some Brits in two Minis drove up and spoke to us, and on finding we were Irish said “what are the Irish doing here!?” Racism and the Brits are never far apart.

It came time to head home from Turkey and so in keeping with Murphy’s romantic view of touring we took the Orient Express from Istanbul to Munich. From there we hitchhiked to Paris and disproved the idea of living off the land. There was nothing, so we starved. Somehow I struck up a conversation with a Frenchman who thought I spoke adequate French and brought us back to his apartment for a few days. Next step was to make our way to Boulogne from where Aer Lingus flew to Dublin. Only problem was we had no money. So, we took the train, and when the conductor asked for our tickets we spoke Irish. After a few attempts they left us alone. The next problem was how to get on a plane with no money! So, we begged the pilots to loan us the money with the promise of repayment from our parents in Dublin. They actually came through and were repaid in Dublin.

As we neared Dublin, one of my concerns, apart from hunger, was how I had done in the school leaving certificate exam, the key to university entrance. Without some financial assistance it was unlikely I would get to university. Mother and father were in the car driving home from the airport. Not a word was said about the exam results! Finally, I had to broach the subject. In reply, my mother said, “Oh, you did OK. You’ve got 2 scholarships to UCD and one to UCG”. So, I suppose all was well that ended well, and Murphy and I certainly had a classic adventure.