From Malin Head to Mizen Head: Frank McNally hitch-hikes from Athlone to Roscrea

There are many good memories from my career as a hitch-hiker. But it's the lifts you didn't get that linger longest in the mind, and many of those lifts were in the midlands. I had a long dark night of the soul in Kilbeggan once. Maybe it was only two hours. But time moves slowly in Kilbeggan when the races aren't on, and the episode left a scar that still hurts in bad weather. And then there was the night I got stuck in Mullingar.

I was bound for Athlone on a Sunday in August, and my last lift warned it might be better to stay on the main road at Kinnegad. Desperate to avoid Kilbeggan, however, I took a chance. It was mid-evening when I started thumbing on the Athlone road, and I was still there at 1am, at which time a guy walking home from a disco recognised me from hours earlier and offered his sofa. I didn't need the sofa. His flatmates stayed up all night talking and drinking. It must have been Mullingar's Latin quarter.

So, soon after the features editor talked me into hitching from Athlone to Roscrea, a mood of foreboding set in. When it emerged that the day appointed would be the hottest of the year, the mood deepened. I hadn't thumbed for years, but I knew things had not improved. You don't see hitch-hikers much any more, and drivers don't stop for anything now. I was going to fry on the N62. All they'd find of me afterwards would be a pool of factor 40 suncream.

Before leaving Athlone, I took the unprecedented step of buying a hat. This wasn't easy. In several shops, the headwear-for-men range was limited to Nike baseball caps. Given a choice between sunstroke and a Nike baseball cap, sunstroke looks remarkably attractive. Dunnes had a few wide-brimmed women's dress hats, which I briefly considered. Finally I found this floppy thing for a fiver. That would do.

At the N62, I waved goodbye to Cyril the photographer, feeling forlorn. It was 1.25pm. The sun beat down, but I was torn between the need for shade and the need to be completely visible to drivers. Thumbing a lift is like trout-fishing, I knew. Your thumb is the hook; the rest of you is the fly. It's important the trout can see you and that you don't look dangerous. Not that you'd go trout fishing in this weather, I thought, wiping the sweat away. I checked the time. It was 1.30pm.

Then a car stopped. The driver was going to Horse and Jockey "to collect a cheque". He could take me all the way to Roscrea. A stroke of luck, and a big dilemma. I reviewed my contractual obligations, the small print of which suggested I take in "points of interest" along the route. Clonmacnoise was the main point of interest, and the turn-off was only four miles away. "You could be a long time waiting for a lift up to Clonmacnoise," the driver warned. I considered his advice with a heavy heart. He was the hitchhiking equivalent of a 15lb trout, and I was about to throw him back in the river.

A wooden sculpture of a pilgrim stood opposite me on the road to Clonmacnoise. It was unnerving, but at least we weren't competing for a lift. In hitch-hiking etiquette, there was nothing worse than when a newcomer stood up-road from you, instead of walking past and joining the queue. The legitimate response was to leapfrog him, but this often left you in a worse location. No such problems now: if you're a hitch-hiker in 2005, you have the road to yourself.

Your man was right. It was very quiet here. A few gravel trucks passed, with the contents of the esker ridge that once carried a road across Ireland through the bogs. An occasional tourist pulled in to consult the signs, avoiding eye-contact. The pilgrim recommended prayer, but I adjusted my road position and, immediately, a truck stopped. The driver looked like Joe Dolan with tattoos. He was just back from Greece, and we agreed he'd brought the weather with him, as he dropped me off a few miles up the road. An elderly farmer took me the rest of the way and offered some local knowledge. If I used the main entrance, they'd charge €4, he said: "But if you wheel around down here, you can get in through the new graveyard for nothing."

He pointed to an unmarked side-road. "Four euros is a lot, and there's not much to see," he said of one of the greatest early Christian sites in Europe. So, not to disappoint him, but also feeling a thrill of subversion, I headed up this country lane. And soon I was in the ruins, mingling with American tourists who were unaware of my terrible €4 secret.

The guide was describing St Ciaran's church, reputed burial place of the site's 6th-century founder. It's a tiny building, but the paving slabs on its floor testify to the saint's reputed power. The son of a carpenter who worked "small miracles" and died at 33, his reputation was so great that for centuries local farmers took pinches of earth from the church to sprinkle at the corners of their fields. "St Ciaran's clay" was thought to protect against "red water" in animals and also certain crop diseases. The OPW finally paved the floor to prevent the walls being undermined.

Beside us, the Shannon wandered lazily through the callows, intersecting the esker ridge in a crossroads that made Clonmacnoise the hub of ancient Ireland. After coffee in the pleasant visitors' centre, I took the road to Shannonbridge and started to worry about the €4. I wasn't sure whether it was St Ciaran or the OPW I'd cheated. But hitch-hiking makes you superstitious and, either way, I knew I'd pay for it. On the way out I passed another sculpture - "Aodh, son of the chief of Oriel" - who died on pilgrimage here in 606. "Oriel?" my conscience said. "That's where you're from, isn't it?" The sun was high and brutal, and there was no tree cover anywhere. To my left, cattle gazed almost vertically down on me from the eskers with a judgmental look. To the right, cruisers wended up and down the river, but nothing wended up and down the road. I'd have a better chance thumbing a boat, I thought. Then - Lo! - the first car stopped. It was driven by a man called - wait for it - Kieran McCarthy, and it even had air-conditioning. A small miracle, if ever there was one. My sin had been forgiven.

Kieran told me he always picked up hitch-hikers and only the odd time regretted it. "I don't mind once they talk to you and they don't smell too bad," he said. Apparently, I fell into the right category, more or less. With this ringing endorsement, he dropped me the far side of Shannonbridge, and within five minutes I had another lift, this time from an elderly couple. They were only going two miles but they took a detour to make it three. "People don't stop as much as they used to," they said.

"But you'll generally get a lift around here - unless you were a quare-lookin' fella, maybe." It was good to know that, even with a bad hat, I wasn't quare-looking. And sure enough, another quick lift left me in Cloghan. I had a choice here. Straight to Birr, or a detour via Banagher. Growing cocky from all the praise, I chose the detour.

An SUV approached, a vehicle unknown in Ireland during my hitch-hiking days and now ubiquitous. I kept my thumb out from politeness (as you do when you see that a driver is female, even though you can be fairly certain she won't give you a lift). But I knew the SUV man wouldn't stop, because SUV drivers were selfish, superior and - in short - everything that was wrong with modern society. And of course he did stop.

He left me at the turn-off for Banagher, and when he noticed I'd dropped my card wallet on the road, he even got out of the jeep to show me where it was. The kindness of strangers was starting to overwhelm me. But I was waiting just long enough on the Banagher road to feel some resentment at the Offaly-registered cars streaming by. "OY" the number plates jeered. "OY yourself!" I muttered back, getting cranky in the heat. The tar was melting now. If you closed your eyes when cars passed, it sounded as if the road was wet.

The old sixth sense you develop as a hitch-hiker was returning, and I had a bad feeling about this spot. Here was where I'd get stuck, I knew. Then a car stopped. The driver was a brickie on the way home. It was "savage" heat to work in, he said: "I felt sorry for you - people don't stop for hitch-hikers now." In Banagher I asked to get out at Hough's pub. As he dropped me off there, he advised me, whatever I did, not to mention the Sunday World to the barman.

Apparently Hough's was slaughtered in a recent review by Pub Spy that is still the talk of Offaly. Among other things the writer said, it was like entering a "mine-shaft", but on the day I visited, the darkness was a relief, and it was the genial barman himself who mentioned the review. Sporting a Lourdes souvenir T-shirt, Michael Hough kept up a non-stop, self-deprecating patter, recalling Pub Spy's most savage criticisms with laughter. Business was up since, he said: "Fellas who hadn't been in for years came back to see were we really that bad."

Tourists are fewer than they were, though, as the midlands suffers from the swing towards short breaks in cities. Not everyone is as persistent as the American who once explained his reason for visiting Banagher (here Michael affected a Yank accent): "Ah wanted to see the heart of Eyer-land - the real people!" Eight lifts through the heart of Ireland, and convinced that these were indeed the real people, I was still only half-way to Roscrea. Reluctantly, I left Hough's mineshaft and went out again into the evening sun. The Angelus bells were ringing.

Notwithstanding the earlier endorsement, sweat had taken its toll and, frankly, I was starting to smell a bit. But it was a straight road now. The next lift left me in Birr, after a very interesting conversation about pheasant breeding; and the last - from a middle-aged couple - landed me on Roscrea's main street at 7pm.

I could have done it in one lift. Instead I'd had 10, and the 30 minutes in Ballinahowen was the longest wait. Kilbeggan was forgiven. So was Mullingar. The friendliness of midlanders had melted me like the tar on the road. I told the Roscrea couple what I'd been doing all day. "You're lucky," they said. "People don't give lifts as much as they used to."

Pointers and pitstops

Start to finish: Athlone - Ballinahowen - Clonmacnoise - Shannonbridge - Cloghan - Banagher - Birr - Roscrea.

Transport: nine cars and a truck.

Distance: 88.2km (54.8 miles)

Worth stopping for: Clonmacnoise; a pint in Hough's of Banagher; the sheer warmth of the locals.

Best part of the trip: Discussing pheasants (after we nearly ran one over) with a driver who used to breed 300 a year and release them into the countryside.

Worst part of trip: The difficulty of buying a hat in the midlands.

Upcoming event in the area: The Mullingar Town Band play at the Proms in the Park on the July 31st in the grounds of the 18th-century Belvedere House, Mullingar, Co Westmeath. For more information see www.belvedere-house.ie