Years passed and inevitably, I developed a Dublin accent. Ireland had become my home. The U.K. was just a memory now. While studying and working as an articled clerk in an accountant’s office in Dublin, (at the tender age of twenty years), I purchased my first motorcycle – a Honda 90CC. I called it a motorcycle; others more critical called it a Singer sewing machine. A friend at the time Sean Farrell, and I had decided to drive to Spain for a vacation. It was the month of October, and to be honest, it was an absolutely ludicrous notion altogether.
At a maximum speed of 40 MPH, it would take us six days to arrive in Spain. The ‘plan’ was then to make a quick turnaround and return home. All of this travel was to be accomplished within a two-week stretch. Apart from the overland drive, our European odyssey encompassed two return sea passages, Dublin to Holyhead, Wales, and then Newhaven, England to Dieppe in France. Prior to our travels, fellow office workers informed us, “You’ll never make it; your bikes are too small”. Over lunch in a Welsh pub, professional bikers in their black leather uniforms reiterated that statement much more bluntly. “Go home you fools”.
However, Sean and I did eventually make it to Spain, but not together. We became separated on the road, somewhere after the city of Toulouse. Sean took a wrong turn north towards Montpellier, rather than south to Perpignan. We did not meet up again till after our holidays in Dublin.
Realizing that I had ‘lost’ Sean, and later looking at the map, I decided to head solo to the Spanish port town of Portbou. Located a mere fifty meters inside the province of Catalonia, there seemed no point in going further. At least I was in Spain. It was the era of General Franco and the police were not too impressed as I drove up towards the deserted border post. Whereas Sean had all the camping gear and a tent on the back of his Honda, I was carrying two sets of clothes.
One of the highlights of my 2-day vacation in Portbou was eating paella for the first time, and later taking a visit to the local cinema. During the unintelligible black and white Spanish movie, I was forced to keep my feet on the seat – so as to avoid contact with the mice and rats foraging on the discarded fruit and candy on the theater’s concrete floor. But, Spain was a blast.
On the return journey through France, my finances were running close to the wire. I was paying the price of having stayed at a hotel in Port Bou. Costwise, I was able to estimate how much money I would need for gas, and so very little money was available for food, hotel, or accommodation of any kind. Each evening after a feast of cheese and dry French bread, I bungy-tied myself to a series of low-lying oak branches, and slept outdoors. My gypsy blood had come to the rescue, once again.