It was a fermenting stream of Irish people who arrived at the French port yesterday, writes MIRIAM LORDin Cherbourg
ANCHORS AWEIGH and onward ho! Pack away the binoculars in Rosslare harbour this afternoon, because you’ll smell us before you see us.
The odyssey continues.
A hot and slightly fermenting stream of Irish humanity converged on the port of Cherbourg yesterday evening. By God, but we had journeyed long – and expensively – to get there.
You’d think we’d been incarcerated in Guantánamo for the last three years, the way we staggered across the gangplank, goggle-eyed with the heat and dreaming of home.
“They have Taay-tos!” cried a woman as she emerged from the shop, waving bags of crisps at her husband, who nearly wept for joy. She would have collapsed at the sight of a Denny sausage.
And heaven knows how she would have reacted had she seen the lovely Bill Cullen in his velour tracksuit. For it was Dr Bill himself.
We overheard him explaining how he hired a driver to take him and his mates from Faro in Portugal and didn’t the car blow up along the way? We hope it wasn’t a Renault.
The bould Bill made the sailing nonetheless.
Before the ship cast off – a little late to accommodate the fevered last-minute arrivals – spirits lifted in more ways than one when the six o’clock news came on and the reassuring tones of Bryan Dobson boomed across the bar.
The area on Deck Five hushed as the latest update on flights to Ireland was broadcast. If most were still grounded, it would confirm to passengers that they were right to throw caution to the wind and embark on a madcap race to make northern France for last night’s sailing. For, if truth be told, when the migrating masses heard yesterday morning that Eyjafjallajökull had let rip again, quite a few experienced guilty feelings of satisfaction.
There would have been nothing worse than arriving back exhausted, whiffy and broke to find that those people who decided to stay put actually got home before you.
And who'd have thought it, thousands of willing and grateful Irish men and Irish women tearing across a continent so they can clamber aboard Oscar Wilde? Himself and Jim Morrison must have been having a right little giggle about it down in Père Lachaise cemetery last night. For mais oui, we were aboard Oscar Wilde, pride of the Irish Ferries fleet.
In some ways, it was easier for the traveller in Oscar’s day:
– Have you anything to declare? – I have nothing to declare but my genius.
Today:
– Have you anything to declare?
– I have nothing to declare except this maxed-out credit card, two weeks’ dirty washing and sore feet.
Surreal, in a way. Which is appropriate, as the first day of our journey Up North from Alicante hinged around a Spanish town called Figueres, birthplace of Salvador Dalí. (We pronounced it Figairy, because if we hadn’t taken a figairy to go to Valencia and beyond, we wouldn’t have been belting across two countries in two days when the public transport lines were booked up.) Train at crack of dawn from Alicante to Barcelona. Change to wrong station.
Miss two trains. Train to Figairy, there to be met by Séamus Martin, former Irish TimesMoscow correspondent and now part-time grape wrangler, olive grower and author in the Languedoc.
Séamus drives us for two hours to Narbonne, across the border in France. Séamus is a saint.
Thence by train to Montpellier, named after Montpellier Hill beside the Phoenix Park, of course. Overnight in cheap hotel.
To station at crack of dawn for TGV fast train to Paris. Change to metro and on to Gare St Lazare for train to Cherbourg. Piece of gateaux (after Irish TimesParis correspondent Ruadhán Mac Cormack rescues us when we get lost). There is a lot of sleeping on the trains, which are packed with volcano refugees. One person snores like the Yorkshire terrier that became famous years ago because it could say "sausages". But we get to darling Oscar.
We meet Janette Milligan from Rostrevor, Co Down, and her daughter Laura (16). They left at 5.30 yesterday morning from Geneva and arrived in Cherbourg at 2.30pm. By taxi.
It cost €1,500, and the bill will be picked up by their medical insurers.
Young Laura, who needs to get home to sit her GCSE’s, fell ill on the last night of a skiing trip and was diagnosed with appendicitis. She had keyhole surgery in France.
“I just can’t wait to get home,” said Janette. “I would walk from Rosslare if I had to.”
Meanwhile, singer Paddy Cole and his seven golfing buddies arrived by coach, having paid €4,000 to the driver. “Now we’ve other fellas coming over and saying they got their’s cheaper.” The Cole crowd were in great form, one of them laughing uproariously for most of the night. “He’s like a hyena – I think it’s nerves and coffee,” said Paddy.
He told us he had to cancel a gig with the Rosses Point Male Voice Choir – but it’s been rescheduled for May 14th in Sligo.
Meanwhile, few will have sympathy for the motoring journalists who were marooned for days in the Marqués de Riscal vineyard in Spain, where they were test driving a new Peugeot car. “We’ve nothing to wear,” protested one of them, as they headed off for dinner, delighted with themselves. What do you call a group of motoring journalists? A marquee? A boot? We’re due in after lunch today. Sailing expected to be reasonably calm.
And after the upheaval, we’ll be dining out on the experience for years.
Mind you, the socks got home before us. They got up and walked on Sunday.