on the road less travelled in Ireland and france

By Conal Healy

As a now 62-year-old father of two, I cannot fathom what possessed my Irish parents to allow me to travel to Paris back in 1977. I was 16-years-old at the time. Still at high school and – to my parents – I framed the visit to the French capital as an immersion for the Leaving Cert I would be facing the following year.

In truth, I wanted to escape. To run away. To have adventures.

I had been studying French at school and suggested the best way to study a language was to hear lots of other people speak it.

So a trip to France, to visit me Paris-based sister was an ideal solution.

From a planning point of view such a trip was a potential nightmare. My sister didn’t have phone – mobile phones hadn’t been invented, a landline phone wasn’t available in their Paris apartment. Everything had to be organized by air-mail (ie snail mail) to France.

If I missed connection, anywhere between Dublin and Paris there was no immediate way of telling my sister that I would be delayed. She was expecting me on the 10.30am train from Le Harve and if I didn’t arrive … well, who knew what the plan was. How was I supposed to get across Paris (a city I had never seen) to an address (with the apartment on the top floor) where my sister lived?

As a teenager I had the confidence for such a journey: I had to book a train fare that would take me from Dublin (Ireland) south to Rosslare, get a ticket on the ferry to Le Harve (France), get from the port to a train station in Le Harve, then buy a ticket to Paris-St Lazare. From Dublin to Paris by land and sea took 28 hours, about 24 hours on the ferry. (A return flight to Paris in that time was about 300 pounds, the equivalent of about 10 weeks wages.)

It would be nice to think I was a good student in the French class – I wasn’t.

From a distance of almost five decades, I have no idea why my parents allowed me to go. Personally I think it was crazy to let somebody so young travel like that. Anything have gone wrong. This was back in the 1970s, before the European Union brought down the borders.

English-speaking foreigners were not particularly welcome – especially by the local gendarme. I was lectured about the Code Napolean – under the French legal system a person is guilty until proven innocent.  

I could only speak a few words of French. And I was Irish. Possibly a terrorist? Back in the 1970s and 1980s, Ireland/Northern Ireland were experiencing The Troubles.

Nightly the TV news was filled with reports of people being shot and bombs exploding. As I waited for the train to Paris in Le Harve, an elderly French man began talking to me. My first conversation in French, in France! When he heard I was from Ireland, the French man jumped away and dramatically mimed a terrorist firing a sub-machine gun. I reassured the man I wasn’t a member of the Irish Republican Army.

Fifty years later (almost) I can’t recall much of my visit to Paris at Easter 1977. There are photos of me at Trocaderro (overlooking the Eiffel tower) wearing a big brown duffle coat. I visited the Louvre (saw the Mona Lisa and wasn’t impressed), went to the Jeu de Palme and the just-opened Pompediu Centre.

The sleeping arrangement for my stay in Paris were remarkable. My sister’s apartment was one street back from the Champs-Élysées. She lived in what would have been a servant’s quarters – her bedroom was down the hall from her kitchen, and the squat toilet was shared with other residents and was down the corridor from the kitchen.

I was relegated to the floor of the kitchen. The room was that small that I had sleep with the French doors (that onto a balcony) open … so I could stretch out while I slept. My sister, an artist, had decided to paint the walls of the kitchen in whale-blood red and the ceiling was painted jet black with silver stars.

The visit to Paris did broadening my mind, in usual ways.

Growing up in Ireland in the 1960s and 1970 was to live without big supermarkets. People grew vegetables and had fruit trees. In autumn, my grand father would pick pears and apples from the trees in the back garden and the fruits of his labor were distributed around the extended family.

Family day outs at that time of year were to pick wild strawberries and raspberries in the nearby countryside. These would then be turned into jam by my mother. For my childhood the only jam to spread on my toast was made by my mother. (Occasionally there would be gooseberry jam, if I am being honest.)

On my first morning in Paris is discovered that not all jams were tart, or bordering on sour, when I tasted a freshly baked baguette smeared with butter … and apricot jam. What is this? How could anything taste so good. The next day I discovered Fruit of the Forest jam. After Paris I would never eat homemade jam again, certainly never strawberry jam. (My distain for strawberry jam remains to this day, I’ll opt for raspberry or blackcurrant on my toast.)

Paris in 1977 was my firsts adventure. I believed my parents believed in me. I believed they had confidence in me, and my decisions. They respected my decisions.

The trip to Paris gave me the confidence – and the desire – to see the world. It broadened my mind – there were other places outside the Ireland of the 1970. I could escape – as Bob Geldof would describe it – the Septic Island that was ruled by priests and police.

Paris 1977 planted in me the seeds to travel the world. All I needed was a passport, a map and a ticket. I knew I could deal with any problem I encountered along the way.

I wouldn’t be the first time I travelled alone. In 1982, I good an overland trip (ferry, train, ferry, train and back) to Amsterdam. Going solo is faster but travelling in good company is exciting and good for you too.