Magical mystery tour on Connemara Bus

You never knew, until now, that the fabled Connemara Bus, made famous many years ago by the singing comedian Din Joe, on RTÉ, is still running as sweet as a mouse’s heart through Connemara.

And, in some magical fashion, its route home from the busy pubs of Spiddal, on a bank holiday night, takes it rattling down the Raglan Road and even along the edge of the green fields of France, past the lonesome enough grave of Willie McBride. Yes, once again, I bring ye the species of pure truth that you will not encounter elsewhere.

Dammit, I am delighted to say that I fulfilled a lifelong ambition, last weekend, by riding home in the Connemara Bus.

Even though I had lived for 20 years in Connemara and raised a family down the road from Spiddal, I never got the opportunity to be a passenger before.

This was because the Irish Press, for which I was writing back then, supplied me with a Japanese staff car every second year and I burned the metallic guts out of them all in covering the big news stories of Connacht and even Donegal.

There was never time for a bus trip, until last weekend. My old heart is happy now.

You see, what happened was a family night out in Spiddal, near which two of my sons now reside with their families, and it is a mighty pleasure altogether to have reached the stage of life where adult sons and a daughter are legally entitled to ferry pints and shorts to their father. Which they merrily did, in all fairness to them.

A mighty evening during which, at one stage, I wandered up the busy Spiddal street, trailing memories behind me, and was amazed to meet an old acquaintance by the name of Tom Giblin, without the long hair which crowned his head when he was one of the musicians in the Crane bar in Galway, where I was a regular.

The long hair is now respectably back-and-sided, the years have treated Tom very well, and he was standing outside the bustling family pub as we remembered days gone by, music played, songs sung and stories told.

Anyway, the evening passed by swiftly, as all good evenings do, and it should be said that the pair of young Gardai who arrived to ensure that all the pubs and bars were clearly and quietly flushed out, around closing time, did their job courteously and even with a smile on their faces.

Nevertheless, one would not chance driving a family car home, and that was why we availed of the services of the Connemara Bus, filling up rapidly with homing revellers of all sizes and shapes and sexes, in the centre of the village.

So, in we climb and that was where a truly magical trip began.

The deep West of Ireland, in all fairness — maybe because of the Gaeltacht element — is where the quintessence of craic is still strongest, despite all the social and economic odds.

The pure truth again. I believe that we first headed out of the village in the general direction of Salthill but, before the driver had reached top gear, we were all in Spancilhill, courtesy of a fine singer in the front seats somewhere, who started it all off. And then, after dropping off a few passengers, we headed back west along Raglan Road, from the throats of all on the bus and, following that, geographically back behind Spiddal somewhere, we visited the grave of young Willie McBride, the lovely fields of Shanagolden, the town of Tralee, Dublin in the rare ould times, and there was even time for a dander along the banks of the Lee.

When folk arrived home, they were reluctant to abandon the choir and that is the pure truth, too.

I admit to lowering the tone of the evening by releasing Paddy McGinty’s goat down the aisle, the goat that swallowed up all the bride’s knickers from the clothesline on her wedding night, but that lapse was quickly remedied by a fine version of ‘Mother Machree’ from somebody else, and the dwindling choir seemed to get even more melodious as the bus safely brought us all home under a velveteen sky on the shores of Galway Bay, a hunter’s moon above all. The West at its very best and most serene.

I was sad when the Connemara Bus finally arrived at our family doorstep and we had to depart the scene. I balanced the McGinty lapse with a verse of the ‘Beautiful Isle of Somewhere’, before alighting reluctantly.

We had been there, for sure. And, better still, factually, the three of us were only asked for a total of €9 for a journey, indeed, along the roads and byways of that beautiful Isle Of Somewhere.