Colm O'Regan: Driving from Dublin to Cork is as much a state of mind as a road

Comedian and Irish Examiner columnist Colm O'Regan pictured in Cork. Picture: Denis Minihane.

The Dublin-Cork Road — as much a state of mind as a road. 

When can you say you are finally free of Dublin? Is it at the narrow bit of the Naas Road where the Luas is a foot away and you and the Luas passengers stare at each other and you’re making uncomfortable eye contact?

Is it after the Long Mile Road junction with the shnakes skipping the traffic queue and driving in the 24-hour bus lane with their left indicators on as if they can’t remember where the turn is? 

(And if they see a garda they have to pretend they suddenly remembered they don’t need petrol after all. Or they get away with it and now want to pull in front of me?! No thank you, I will not be letting you in. Not a hope. OK so, g’wan.)

Is it at the Poitín Stil pub or the place with the forklift suspended over the fence? I can never remember what that place sells. Is it forklifts or fences?

Or do you still feel like you are in Dublin even at Naas where someone in an Audi is driving too close to the car in front and then taps on the brakes four miles ahead and the ensuing panic propagates back to where we all are now stuck in a traffic jam with no apparent cause?

But at some point you’re free, the last clinging entrails of Dublin are gone.

You go through the Curragh and it looks nice in the frosty morning sun and you swear you’re going to go for a walk there one day. But you never will. Why would you be stopping? You can’t stop now you’ve got through the hard bit.

Then the exit 14 chipper which you sneak past in case the children ask to stop. But you can’t stop. You had a very definite idea of what time the family is arriving in Cork and We. Will. Not. Be. Stopping. Unless. It’s. An. Emergency.

The toll is next. Will the barrier raise in time? What if it is raising for the fella in the Audi three inches behind you instead and it breaks off your windscreen?

The next milestone is the M8. Ireland’s friendliest motorway. They give you a 4km warning on the road signs. They have to. If a Cork person missed the turn for Cork, the intergenerational trauma would be too much to bear.

That’s when it starts. The vast nothingness between exit 3 and exit 8. The Supermac’s to McDonald’s parkway. The Sea of Despond. An anomaly in spacetime.

The Dublin-Cork journey is about three hours but the bit in the middle takes three days.

You have no memory of it after you pass through except for a few points. Like the River Goul. Is it .. you know “gowl”?

There was a Sam Dennigan lorry that looks like a giant packet of Burger Bites. A sign for Urlingford and you remember stopping in Josephine’s after a match and the longest pee you’ve ever had. But after that, nothing but steppe.

But then it livens up. Exit 8, 9, 10 in quick succession. You hope the children won’t spot McDonald’s at exit 8. Because. We. Are. Not. Stopping.

There’s no Skeeheenarinky any more but somehow the mountains tell you you’re passing through the gates of Co Cork.

It all seems downhill from here. Apart from the uphill.

You tell everyone else in the rest of the car Not. To. Say. A. Word. While you figure out the road configuration at the Dunkettle Interchange.

“Take the four lane from the left to turn right and keep right at the fork to go left,” says the SatNav before doing that little “booblybum” noise that tells you you’ve gone wrong.

But how wrong could you be? You’re in Cork.