My way or the highway – An Irishman’s Diary on how motorways have changed our sense of place

Ah, tis far from the bóthar – the cow over – that many of today’s young ones were reared. Ah, sure auld Ireland is changing fast with these new-fangled motorways. A recent trip to Connemara resulted in me abandoning my traditional Ulster marching route for the lure of long, luscious motorways. Living up North – it is grim up North, it is always grim up North – I usually head down our own wee bit of a motorway that starts in Belfast and ends in a field in Tyrone. Yes, our wee motorway is unique. It must be the only motorway in Western Europe that begins in a city and finishes, not in another city, but in the countryside. (Ah, sure, we’ll not talk about why. It might upset this paper’s unionist readers!)

Then it’s country roads all the way to Enniskillen, across into Blacklion, more country roads to Sligo, and more country roads to Charlestown, and more country roads through all the other little western settlements I have loved and admired (while stuck in a queue of traffic) until, finally, I get to Galway, home of the greatest traffic jams in all of Ireland. (Ah, Galway, mo ghrá geal, it is as well I loved you so much, I spent so much time on your roundabouts.)

Those days of gallivanting through the Whest are gone now, however. No longer will I cross the railways gates in the West, wonder what Kiltimagh is really like, note the placenames with interest, stop at the Yeats County Inn for their wonderful chowder. (That I will I miss!)

No, I have gone all Future Gael; I have embraced the motorway. My last trip to Galway – and its wonderful roundabouts – was taken via dual-carriage, onto the Southern M1, through the M50 and across country on motorway. Apart from the few miles it took me to get onto the local dual carriageway, I spent the entire journey on motorway. It was, to say the least, disconcerting.

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I know I was in Galway because I was there in Galway. That said, I am still not sure how I got there. I was in the car and then I was out of the car. There were tolls – a lot of tolls – and then there was Galway. I think I was in Ireland. The roadside signs led me to believe that I never left Ireland and yet I feel that I was never in Ireland. How does someone know that they have travelled in Ireland when they did not actually see any part of Ireland?

I am old enough to remember the trip to Dublin before the shiny, Southern M1 opened. It went through places – Newry, Dundalk, Drogheda, Swords and Balbriggan. These were the places you stopped for traffic jams, a loo break, a feed of chips. These were places where Northerners and Southerners met in mutual headshaking: “Yeez, that traffic is cat,” say the Belfast folk. “What has a cat got to do with the traffic?” ask the Southerners.

These were deep cultural exchanges, talk across the barricades, a human interaction, a realisation that some Spud-eating Free State Surrender Monkeys were all right and that not all Northerners travelled South with AK-47s and RPGs in the luggage.

Alas, that has gone now. I do not know how we will rekindle the chat in the soulless motorway stops that actually offer a much better range of food than a bag of chips.

Damn delicious modernisation for providing such wonderful sustenance for the body while actually impoverishing the soul. The young ones behind the counter have no ability to talk about traffic jams or the weather. They don’t care about small talk. They just take your order, press a few buttons and wish you – insincerely – a nice day.

I travelled West in daylight and recognised nowhere. I came home in darkness and recognised nowhere. It felt like travelling to the Moon. I was an astronaut, finding my way by the very efficient signs. There was no need of map or prayers. Yes, I suspect that the spirituality of the Irish people has greatly declined with the rise of the motorway. How rarely would anyone need to say these day: “I think I missed a turn. I don’t think we are on the right road. Please God, we are on the right road.”

Now you know you are on the right road – because there is actually a right road and it has a sign on it.

And there have been other cultural impoverishments.

Will I be the last of my kind, the last of the laochra, who has had to stop the car at the side of the road and, discreetly, wee behind a hedge? No longer will the men of Ireland – fir na hÉireann – be seen at the edge of the bóthar having a slash in Sligo, a whizz in Wicklow, a leak in Leitrim. We have turned our backs on our birth right. There are nice loos in Applegreen.