She grew up in Lismore, County Waterford, and left school at 14 to look after her disabled mother. Well, it was clear if you were 10-year-old Dervla Murphy.
Clearly a bike ride to India was meant to be.
On her birthday she received her first bicycle, and also an atlas – both of them second-hand. With Dervla Murphy the space monster moment was earlier than most. But to discover its meaning, just read Dervla MurphyĪlways, among these adventures involving blistered feet or frostbitten fingers, I'm intrigued by the moment where the idea bursts out of the adventurer, seemingly fully formed, like the nasty little space monster in the Alien movie. Insouciance is a word not often used nowadays. Setting out in 1963, Irish writer Dervla Murphy, who died last month, went further than any of them. Laurie Lee to the south coast of Spain, Paddy Leigh-Fermor to Constantinople, Hilaire Belloc to Rome.
Several great writers share the simple plotline of 'cross the Channel and just keep going'.
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