For many years going to the West, or Connemara, writes this young man, has been the holiday place (Riviera?) of many in Ireland, and in particular Dublin. Who remembers travel westwards by motor car in the 1950s or 1960s? Of course, the roads are now broader, smoother and faster. Towns, once watering-holes and shopping stops, are quieter because the road has taken another route. So Lucan, Leixlip, Maynooth, Kilcock, Athlone, Ballinasloe, Oranmore, Galway city are avoided or skirted on the westward drive. Kinnegad has been circumvented. Doubtless such bypasses bring welcome relief to the inhabitants and the weary motorist, but what glories are now not seen - the handsome villages of Kildare and Meath, the Shannon at Athlone, the castle and barracks; Ballinasloe with its tall buildings (and Hayden's Hotel). Then the village of Oranmore and the sea drive into Galway city and the salmon weir bridge are all now a detour.
In the past, every village and hamlet got a nod from the traveller - here an interesting house, there a fine tree, and in Craughwell - was it? - that fine tea, blended by the proprietor, could be bought in a pub/shop called Mulvaney's. The thirsty traveller could note Kilrickle with its fine pubs. And where was it that a line of giant crab-apple trees stood? Just beyond Kilrickle. Now gone. But all is different when Maam Cross is reached and the road leads westward along the valley, skirting occasionally the old railway line of the long-gone Galway to Clifden train, and river and lake. And then Recess, otherwise Braith Salach, with its wonderful lake into which used to pour, after the first floods in July, shoal after shoal of sea trout, all in line of precedence; first the four-pounders and so on down to the smallest which came tinkling up over the shallows at night, as the water went down.
Finally, from those remembered waters, the last bit of homeward run under the Twelve Bens. That's all from our young friend. And when you remind him that in the Fifties the driver calculated on hitting Galway in about three hours 20 minutes, he said the time hadn't changed all that much. In the Fifties you had fewer cars on the road.