Chalk and Cheese: Two Views of Ireland.
Standing at the side of the road the next day, with his fridge, worried about a lift, Tony couldn't have imagined what this one little tip had meant. The rest of trip is a little let down for anyone seeking serious tales of adventure. Don't read me wrong, Tony experienced the most outrageous adventure, but probably not of the sort you're imaging, when you think of someone trying to hitch around Ireland with a Fridge. Gerry Ryan had him on air every morning on the talk show, and the nation was mobilised. People would just recognise him with his fridge and go out of their way to take him a little further. He was offered free accommodation, got a mobile phone from a television crew that shot an interview with him, and started fielding calls on his mobile from people wanting to put him up or take him along his way. In fact, to get a break from it all, he'd have to hide his fridge ...
Rosita Boland's book Sea Legs: Hitch-hiking the Coast of Ireland Alone is a very different kettle of fish. She'd returned home to Ireland after years abroad, to try and discover some of her own country. She writes a wonderfully descriptive account of her trip around the island, by thumb. She even stayed in the same B&B in Bunbeg as Tony years later (Bunbeg House), and describes flying back fromm Tory island in a helicopter years before, something Hawks tried so hard to organise with Andy of Bunbeg House.
At times I have to confess Boland's style is a little over descriptive, put bluntly, boring, and difficult to read. But on the whole, her story is so beautifully typical of a hitch-hiking trip, so pickled with coincidence, adventure, humour that the book is a worthwhile read in the end. She has a lot off beautiful history to share, and wonderful descriptions of Ireland, that Hawks manages to side-step. She expresses so many sentiments close to my heart, her descriptions of home, of spontaneity, of waiting, of cities ... Only her attitude to weather puzzles me.
She started in her home town of Ennis on October 1st and arrived there again on the Winter solstice (December 21st) to celebrate Christmas with her family. It was miserably wet and cold almost all the way. She chose winter deliberately she says to avoid the tourists, and yet of the weather, she
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