Frank McNally: My 135km journey in Ireland without a car

My decade-long experiment in not owning a car has been a success overall, with occasional complications during holiday season, as rentals become too expensive and I have to rely on public transport, to sometimes traumatic effect.Hence the Sunday just gone, when I needed to get from Monaghan – where I’d been speaking at a heritage week event the night before – to Delgany, Co Wicklow, to deputise for an indisposed colleague at the launch of a book.It was a journey of about 135km, the first 132km of which proved relatively uncomplicated. Thus, I caught the early bus from Carrickmacross to Dublin, then from Dublin a Dart to Greystones. There, while awaiting the L1 service to Delgany, I had time for a relaxed coffee and a chance to think of a few things to say at the book event. READ MOREThe launch marked a double milestone: the 75th anniversary of The Irish Times Simplex crossword and the last collection of same to be published by its compiler of 40 years: Mary O’Brien.According to the forwarded email, speeches were due to start at about 3.45pm. And calculating I would get there with 30 minutes to spare – a lifetime record, or near enough – I boarded the L1 feeling almost smug. Then I checked the email again and entered the name of the venue in Google maps, something I should probably have done earlier. This is when I realised that the hotel was not in Delgany. It was merely of Delgany, but a couple of miles north of the village. Worse, the L1’s nearest stop left me in that classic Irish locational paradox. Yes, I was now trying to get to somewhere from a place that fell into the category: “I wouldn’t start from here if I were you.”In short, the bus left me at an underpass leading on to the Glen of the Downs dual carriageway: a notorious road that cuts like a four-lane scalpel through steep wooded hills. Centuries ago, this used to be a mountain pass, so forbidding for stagecoaches that it was bypassed as early as 1814. In more recent times, the late 1990s, the road was controversially widened, and people went to jail to try to save some of the ancient oak trees that had to be sacrificed.But from where I now stood to where I needed to be, there was no other path than this ferociously busy route, which was clearly not built with pedestrians in mind. Yes, north Wicklow readers, I realise in retrospect I should have started the Dublin leg of my journey in Busáras, and caught the number 133 bus, which stops opposite the hotel. Either that or ordered a taxi from Delgany.But it was too late now. Also, unlike during my recent transport emergency at Croagh Patrick, the desperate options available here excluded hitchhiking. That may not be illegal on a dual carriageway, but it didn’t seem a safe thing to attempt in such fast-moving traffic.So nervously, I took to the grass margin on the left-hand side of the road, retreating behind crash barriers where available, and continued on foot. I tramped northwards for half an hour, stumbling occasionally on the briars and sapling stumps, and looking (I guessed) like somebody who’d escaped from a high-security facility.Had anyone ever walked this road, I wondered? Either way, the route felt like a no man’s land for anyone not in one of those metal cocoons roaring mercilessly past a few metres to my right.As is more typically the case, meanwhile, I was now cutting it fine for the launch, so tried to ring Mary and reassure her. But first, the number I had was wrong, and when I found the right one and rang it several times, there was no answer. It was probably on silent, or inaudible in the buzz of conversation.Then I tried ringing the hotel instead: no reply there either. So I ploughed on with renewed urgency, realising I could still make the venue, just about, for 3.45pm.In a small, added indignity, it now started raining and I didn’t have an umbrella. Realising that rain might be bad for the suede jacket I was still wearing from the night before, I turned the jacket inside out. [ The Simplex crossword at 75: a complex business of thrilling and annoying readersOpens in new window ]At which point, from long buried memory, I recalled that a misadventure involving a suede jacket and an enforced walk in bad weather had once been a subplot in the 1990s sitcom Seinfeld. A disturbing thought, although not the first time my life had resembled something Larry David might write.Anyway, when I finally reached the hotel, it emerged that Mary – giving up on a guest speaker – had done the job herself. But galvanised by my trek through darkest Wicklow, I was not prepared to let the audience off that easily. So I gave my speech anyway and, in what may be a publishing first, officially launched a book the event’s supply of which had already sold out.