Wish you were here!
Maeve Binchy
One of the problems that Ireland used to have in the old days of attracting tourism was that it was not very well known as a destination. Europeans were inclined to think it was part of Britain. and others further afield thought that is was Iceland. Now ironically the name of Ireland has become only too well known but on the front pages rather than in the travel pages of the world's press. The big bread-and-butter market which formed the bulk of visitors, a million or so British tourists, began to feel that the situation was at best delicate and worst dangerous and began to think in terms of other holidays. And how are you going to keep them down on the farm after they've seen Paree on a cheap charter?
So tourism, the country's second biggest industry and biggest foreip currency earner, took a big dive in Ireland. Hoteliers began to have a lean and hungry look, coach tour operators began to think in terms of ferrying teams to football matches, the horses that were going to pull the Romany caravans had a niCe rest out on grass, and the newly bought cruisers for the inland waterways began to creak a little from lack of use. And it was all tragedy and a waste, because the mountains, the roads, the rivers and the beaches were still there. The new hotels, some beautiful, others hideous, were there with their reception areas receiving fewer and fewer people, the women who had trained in the art of managing small guesthouses with friendly service for two or three families at a time were looking longingly at all the extra blankets and cups and saucers they had bought and wondering would the tourists, like swallows, ever come back.
In a way this depression might be the best thing that Ireland ever knew as regards tourism. Because it meant that people had to worry about standards. It was no longer good enough to put up a sign on your door and hope that the visitors would arrive; you had to be good, really good, to get them, keep them and bring them back. Ireland in 1974 is both better value and better quality for a holiday than it was in 1968, and the welcome is warmer and more sincere.
You don't go to Ireland for the weather, but then the weather is not a masochist's dream either! if you listen to the British weather forecasts, you hear about a series of troughs of low pressure and winds coming from Ireland, but they had to pass over Ireland, didn't they, before getting here it they originated somewhere in the Atlantic? The island is not green because of torrential rainfall, nor do we have freak snowstorms in July.
You don't go to Ireland for a sophisticated nightlife, with rows of casinos, strip joints, and dancing girls; and if you went there looking for a beach holiday with long promenades and illuminations, and minstrels, then you'll have to look fairly hard, because the seaside resorts of Ireland, Tramore, Ballybunion, Salthill, Bundoran, Bangor or Porthrush would never threaten Brighton or Blackpool, and perhaps they are all the luckier for not being in that league.
But there are very many good reasons why you should g° !..o Ireland, some of them practical. some of them almost sentimental, I In practical terms, it's near, VerY near. And because it's near les easy to get to. The flights take less than an hour, but are expensive if you buy ticket alone. It would be madness to buy only an air ticket and then pay for car hire, hotel accommodation and everything else afterwards, when there are packages that imply no degree 01 organisation, no shepherding, onlY great economies. The sea cros°. ings are so many and various that a map of the routes would look like a series of bridges across the Irish Sea. The two shipping corn. panies that get you there, Sealing and the Irish company B and I. are in strong competition to catch the, motorists and the 'foot passengers as they call them. Probably B and I have the edge with special offerS new ships in the pipeline, readymade packages, and a verY good bargain called the 'Wednesday Special,' which offers the in" ducements of seduction to those willing to travel midweek. It's practical to go to Irelan& too, for the British, because there is an amazing fail-safe arrangement which no other country has ever offered. It.5, called the Special Guarantee. I' you choose a holiday from the large list of those featured in the tourist brochures and claim that any part of it, hotel, car hire. cruiser, caravan, does not live uP to what was promised, you get', your money back. You don't get it back autorna' tically, of course. The case i5 judged on the evidence Yntt provide, and if the committee looking into complaints judge that you were unfairly treated, did Ott get a room with a bath, did n°' have a ...ar to meet your plane 0° time or whatever the gripe may be, then that part of the holidaY cost is refunded without question. When you consider the number of tourists who have been to OA' named continental resorts to fin' a hotel barely built or the fiv! minutes from sea being by:" minutes if you had a helicopte`i then the Irish guarantee mliss reassure the most suspiciou traveller. Leaving practicality aside, iti5 there another reason why Y°1 might want to go to Ireland? think there are many good reason: for wanting to live there if that', your native land. I love the that cities are almost villages
terms of knowing people, and villages are like families. I love the way that people talk to you easily and accept that everyone has something interesting to say. They would prefer to be drawn into any conversation, even risking that it might be one of monumental boredom, than to stand speechless beside others of the human race. I love the way you can get out of cities and towns in a matter of minutes, and that because it's a small island the sea is never far away. But these are all the emotions of a native, what will the tourist find?
I believe he will find friendliness —less formality leading up to conversations through endless remarks on the weather or the cost of living. Irish people like to know where you come from. Is it a good place to be from, what kind of a life you lead there, and what brought you to Ireland? Wherever you are in the country they tell you that you should be somewhere else. If you are in Killarney they say you should head for Galway Races, if they met you in Connemara in early September, they ask you querulously why you are not down in Kerry at the Rose of Tralee Festival. They are great at telling you what they would do in your shoes, and are usually good if eccentric ambassadors for their own land. They will tell you the best boatman to take you out fishing, the pub where they have a good impromptu sing-song rather than the rather folksy affairs laid on for American tourists. But even the organised 'Irish evenings' are not too painful at all, laced with mead and medieval castles. If you go to a banquet in Bunratty or Knappogue you could find yourself loving something that sounds phoney and ersatz in print.
The Irish have woken up to the fact that visitors like to do things and meet people when on holidays and are giving them opportunities to do so. If you want a bit of activity there is everything from joining an established hunt or shoot for a week to taking part as an individual in a barge cruise full of strangers which becomes a watery houseparty in a matter of hours. If your children yearned for ponies, then ponies there are in profusion; if you wanted to play golf undisturbed they have the championship courses; if you want to lose your money the horses and the dogs are champing away in racecourses and dog tracks to help you do it. The traffic is easy to negotiate, the roads once out of town are literally empty by British standards. Even after months of working in London as I do now I can never accept the patient docile queues that pack the roads at weekends, when I was brought up to drive wherever we wanted without fear of meeting more than the odd other motorist and the odder flock of sheep.
And it is because I do live in London now that I know what makes Ireland special apart from the family, the friends and the welcome in the newspaper pub across the road. It's things like taking a train one morning to Galway and a boat that afternoon to the Aran islands and hiring a bicycle for three days. It's a day like driving thirty miles from Dublin to Wicklow and having a lovely lonely walk around a lake and a great few drinks in a jolly friendly pub, and following it all up with a big five-star meal in some country-house type hotel. It could even be the peace of looking at the waves crashing below as we drive along the Antrim coast road or through quiet countryside in Fermanagh and believing very seriously that if the pockets of peace up here are so large the other pockets must get less violent with time, and perhaps a little time.
If you have to spend a great deal of time getting from one place to another in busy Britain you appreciate the nearness of everything in Ireland. If you are tired of staying in big hotels, impersonal and so similar that it is hard to remember where you are and where you have been, then it is a joy and a happiness to rent a little cottage with a thatched roof but a super kitchen and live exactly as you please for a few unwinding days.
You will be welcome in Ireland. It sounds like a bit of tourist propaganda, but it's true. You have been away too long.
Maeue Binchy is Travel Editor of the Irish Times
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