Éire go on – let us lead you astray

YOU’VE just arrived at Shannon Airport from Boston on your inaugural trip to the land of your forebears. You pick up your hired car and, within a minute, are facing your first challenge – a roundabout.

You succeed, fairly hesitantly, in easing through this unfamiliar road junction without crashing into anyone else. It’s just the first of many challenges you’re going to meet on roads around Ireland. Press the button for Lyric FM and welcome to the mystery tour.

We’re into the season when people coming to our shores, hoping for peaceful and stress-free holidays, get lost. You’ll see them pulled into roadsides and car parks, frantically scanning maps and tourist guides for their destinations.

A growing number of tourists now come to Ireland to see our natural attractions, archaeological remains and what could be described as heritage gems. That’s what Tourism Ireland says.

They are generally well off the beaten track and poorly signposted. Not too long ago, yours truly, who at this stage can claim to have a reasonably good knowledge of the country, got an unplanned tour of Co Offaly whilst trying to reach the monastic site at Clonmacnoise.

So what must it be like here for people accustomed to driving around blocks in cities and on four-lane highways. The cliffs of Moher and Galway and Killarney are easy enough to get to, but can you imagine trying to poke out Skellig Michael, or places in the Inishowen Peninsula, or Blacksod Bay? Millions of our visitors can travel thousands of miles by air and sea, without a hitch, but the problems start as soon as they land.

Getting around the country can be a nightmare. It must be a decade ago since Cork TD Deirdre Clune suggested the number of complaints from tourists about signposting surpassed complaints about Irish weather. She was probably right and the situation hasn’t changed.

But let’s turn all this on its head. Why don’t we actually exploit the situation and promote going astray in Ireland as a tourist attraction in its own right? Sell it as something that adds to the ‘charm’ of an Irish holiday. Real fun, as Americans might put it.

There are surprises around every corner. You could run into a group of people working in the bog, or milking their cows, or baling hay, or having a fight about trespassing sheep. You might even end up in a genuine Irish pub and meet the locals in their natural habitat. There could be a music session (unamplified), or a sing-song going on.

On the day of the unscheduled tour of Offaly, I chanced on one of the nicest pubs I’ve ever experienced, JJ Killeen’s, in Shannonbridge. The man behind the counter had all the time in the world to chat and share his encyclopaedic knowledge of his own place. He also served the best tomato soup in Ireland, beside a turf fire.

That hour in Killeen’s was the most delightful part of a few days in the Midlands. And it happened completely by accident. So, yes, people can enjoy a holiday in Ireland if they throw away the road maps and guide books and just keep adventurously moving into the unknown.

The present reality, however, is that the vast majority of our visitors are not into mystery tours and they plan their trips carefully. When leading Limerick hotelier Mary Fitzgerald was president of the Irish Hotels’ Federation (IHF), a few years ago, she made an issue of what she described as ‘continuous negative feedback’ from visitors in relation to confusing signs and the inferior road network in Ireland.

She made the obvious point that it was senseless investing in marketing campaigns to attract visitors to specific regions who, when they eventually arrived here, got lost. This creates a frustrating, negative experience, she pointed out.

“I would challenge all the county engineers to actually get in their cars, pretend they are a tourist and drive to a number of destinations in neighbouring counties and depend solely on road signage as their means of direction,” Ms Fitzgerald said.

Some of our overloaded signposts, including an iconic example in Ballyvaughan, Co Clare, feature on picture postcards, right up there with the skittish Rush Hour in Ireland series.

On the other hand, you can come to important junctions that have no signposting. To add to the farce, you work by instinct and take the turn you think is most likely to lead you to your destination, only to finish up in the middle of nowhere. Sometimes, you’ll come across signs for villages, or townlands, but none for bigger towns.

When you ask a local person for directions out of the maze, you can get a corny reply to the effect: “Well, you could get there from here, but I wouldn’t start here if I was going there myself.”

The joys of getting lost in Ireland.