Áilín Quinlan: TV show luring tourists - and terrible drivers - to West Cork

Years ago, I read a novel about a large family in America.

Believe me, it was the first of many novels I was to read about families in America, but a few lines from this one stayed in my head.

Any time the family had to make a lengthy road trip, the father – who like many dads in U.S fiction was ex-military – made them all, despite their justifiable, deeply-felt and very vocal protests - rise at 3am so he could get on the road while they were clear.

I thought he was a lunatic and that they were unbelievably long-suffering. What was his problem, I wondered.

Alas, how life lurks in the long grass waiting to bite us on the butt.

It’s June, the overseas visitors are here. They’d like to see the famed Drombeg Stone Circle outside Rosscarbery or paddle in the waves at Inchydoney beach. They’re dying to take the cable-car to Dursey or see how accurately Bodkin portrayed Union Hall and Glandore.

And I say, yes; absolutely, but we need to be on the road straight after breakfast – that is, on or before 9.30am really.

I see them looking at me a bit askance.

Drombeg, for example, is only 40 minutes away from where we are.

But yet, like the ex-military dad, here was I, incomprehensibly, wanting to be on the road by first light for the stated reason that I want to travel while the traffic is light.

But this is West Cork, they say, their eyes shining.

Particularly if they’ve recently watched Bodkin.

“Ahhh, summertime in West Cork,” they breathe.

Ah, yes, of course; West Cork is so friendly and so full of charming, eccentric, time-rich locals and empty sylvan fuschia-fringed by-roads with no mad drivers.

There are no mad scum-bucket drivers around here. Of course.

I explain.

Drombeg Stone Circle, for example, is a very popular destination with visitors.

Its 17 standing stones, which date back to the Bronze Age, are located deep in the countryside on a glorious natural ledge overlooking the crashing white waves of the Atlantic.

Coming from the direction of Cork city, Drombeg is accessed by a relatively narrow winding road that leads from the outskirts of the village of Rosscarbery and then a turn-off onto a little one-vehicle-width lane.

It means that those who take the read from Rosscarbery in the direction of the Stone Circle must proceed a bit more carefully, and once they turn off onto the narrow lane that leads to Drombeg, much greater care is required.

There’s no problem if you pick your times and navigate the roads at sensible speeds and with some care and caution.

Alas, many Irish-born tourists – foreigners, in fairness, as a whole tend to be more careful – come flying along the narrow roads and the even narrower lane leading to the circle in their outsized SUVs right in late morning or mid-late afternoon when the spot is at its busiest.

For some reason, they can’t quite seem to grasp that small, bendy rural roads like this one, and others of its ilk running through so much of the West Cork network, require a much slower speed.

So many of them drive at or just below the rate of speed that they would use on larger, wider roads, which, believe me, is fast.

So really, I explain, if, the morning after the trip, my visitors would like to get up from the same beds they left that morning - and in one piece - it’s really best to on the road before the visiting D-Reg Brigade and the rest of the local visitors have gobbled their Full Irish Breakfasts and headed out on their mission of terror. Usually from around 11am.

My visitors look at me in horror and incomprehension.

With a sigh, I offer the picturesque scene facing drivers who exit the town of Bandon via the route through the villages and town of Enniskeane, Ballineen, Dunmanway, Drimoleague and onwards to Bantry.

The main road connecting Bandon with these centres – and which runs through their main streets (though Dunmanway has a sort of turn-off which helps one avoid the congested town centre) is just so wonderfully, comfortably wide, I explain.

Yes, of course there are speed limit signs. There are blinking electronic signs flashing information about the speed at which you’re travelling and begging you to slow the hell down because you’re breaking the limit. Effort has been made.

But next to nobody - and, Garda Commissioner Drew Harris, I mean next to nobody, takes the slightest bit of notice.

Vehicles of all shapes and sizes, from small cars to juggernauts, tear straight through the centres of these small urban clusters and onwards, often at, I’ve estimated, more than twice the designated speed limits.

Why? Because they are travelling lovely wide roads that have no speed bumps, and no regular surveillance because the vastly over-stretched and glaringly under-resourced West Cork Garda Roads Policing Unit cannot be everywhere across a sprawling region which stretches from the Bishopstown Viaduct to Beara.

It doesn’t matter if there’s a continuous white line and a lot of bends or a large vehicle on their side of the road.

Many vehicles will still travel at wild speed, tear around a vehicle parked on their side of the road, and scream right into your lane, they will still tailgate you and overtake you across a white line and on a corner, careless of oncoming traffic.

A lot of drivers, I explain to my visitors, now become deeply irritated by the presence of a driver in front of them who is complying with speed limits.

And thanks to – well, who knows; lack of manpower/ lack of resources/ lack of government determination to do anything about it/ the Garda Operating Policy/ Drew Harris - there’s quite literally nobody out there anymore to stop the appalling bullying and harassment by other motorists of a driver obeying the speed limit.

I described a very recent experience as I approached Dunmanway on that lovely, lovely, big, wide flat, unobstructed, comfortable road leading from the villages of Enniskeane and Ballineen.

As you approach the outskirts of the town, visible speed limit signs warn drivers the limit is reducing, first from 100km/h to 60km/h, and then to 50km/h.

I obeyed and slowed down, as did a couple of the drivers behind me. Alas, the guy driving the Skoda was having none of it.

As the rest of us proceeded in a demure convoy through the 50km/h zone, Skoda guy zipped - at speed - around the two cars directly behind me. He then screamed around my car, and ricocheted straight towards the town centre.

The town and its approaches constitute what I would describe as a very densely populated area. The area is lined on both sides of the road by a pretty lake-side park, supermarkets, houses, shops, and a highly visible Garda station.

Additionally, the town centre is bisected by a very busy road full of cars and, er cyclists, and, er, pedestrians, sometimes elderly and slow, who could be in the process of crossing the road.

My visitors had started looking a bit nervous.

“So,” I said reassuringly, “that is why we will try to get on the road - while the traffic is light and before the bad drivers are up.”

Capiche?

This is summer in West Cork now. Forget Bodkin. The Obamas have a lot to answer for.