In the early 1930s one of Ireland’s
nest novelists, Kate O’Brien, foresaw
that globalisation (a term not yet
invented) would drain much of the
excitement out of “going abroad”. This
process partly explains why my
generation is special; many of us
octogenarians have been uniquely
exposed to temporal-cum-spatial
culture shock. Growing up in rural
Ireland —Lismore, County Waterford—
I had several classmates who walked
three or four miles in bare feet to and
from primary school. That small town
remains my home and those
classmates’ descendants now regularly
y intercontinentally on business or for
holidays. Seventy years ago most
families had never even undertaken the
130-mile journey to Dublin.
I rst saw an aeroplane at the age of
14 on a day trip to what would soon
become Shannon Airport. Watching it
take o, the notion of air transport
excited me more than space travel now
excites my grandchildren. Five years
later, when planning a month-long
European journey, the Cyclists’ Touring
Club magazine oered a thrill; for less
than the Dover-Calais ferry fare, a
12-seater plane would wave-hop me
from Lydd to Le Touquet in 25
minutes—and bicycles travelled free.
Yet I still remember my rst border
crossing as a rather shabby anti-climax;
the French had underinvested in Le
Touquet’s Customs and Immigration.
Then came an unexpected challenge;
my frugal father had disinterred a wad
of 1920s French francs, saved from his
student days, and these were mocked
by a short-tempered elderly man in the
“Exchange” prefab at the aireld.
Luckily my mother had foreseen this
possibility and provided a backup.
For me this arrival in France ranked
as a “rst” because one didn’t then
think of crossing a border whenThe indomitable Irish adventure cyclist recalls
furtive and comical border incidents
travelling from any part of Ireland to
Britain. Which is why it is so
disconcerting to think, 70 years later,
that to-ing and fro-ing between the
Republic of Ireland and Northern
Ireland might, if Brexit happens,
become rather (or very?) problematic.
The decades following my rst
overseas trip provided many border
incidents—irritating, amusing,
thrilling. Among the more comical was
a furtive 1994 entry into Mozambique
from Zimbabwe. I was on a roundaboutway back to South Africa to rejoin the
bicycle which a year earlier had taken
me from Nairobi to Cape Town. My
daughter Rachel met me in Harare,
being on a week’s leave from her work
as a U.N. volunteer in Beira,
Mozambique. We had planned that her
partner Andrew would drive up from
the coast of Mozambique to collect us at
the border town of Mutare. But
bureaucracy can stymie the neatest
plans. In Harare we found out that my
Mozambican visa would take at leastA view across Lough Slug in Barnesmore Bog, County Donegal, in the Republic of Ireland.
The invisible border with Northern Ireland lies beyondROB STOTHARDCROSSING THE LINE
By DERVLA MURPHY
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