TRAVEL FEATURE - IRELAND
JACQUI FURNEAUX
WHAT ' S THE CRAIC ?
It ’ s funny that we need about a dozen English words to explain what craic is . The word ‘ crack ’ originally went travelling from England to the north and was borrowed by the Scots before the Irish gave it both a permanent home and the Gaelic intonation of ‘ craic ’. Craic means banter , to have a laugh , gossip , leg-pulling , news , or simple verbal fun . All this in one word . You can ’ t do it on your own ; it ’ s always social and whatever it is , I wanted to experience it in the country which is so near and yet one I ’ d never explored by the Enfield that has taken me to twenty-seven other countries across the world .
My first visit to Ireland had been during a family holiday in the 1980s . We ’ d hired a heavily built gypsy caravan with a horse and roamed the Dingle Peninsula .
The feckless horse dragged the caravan into a ditch in search of better grass one day . We were stuck fast until a lorry driver who was more square than tall jumped out of his cab and lifted the whole thing out of the ditch and back on the road before he drove off , leaving us gaping open-mouthed as if we ’ d just had a visit from Superman .
The next time was when my younger daughter and I went on my 500cc Suzuki Slingshot . We went to Bray where she got sunburnt in the sand-dunes and to Dublin where I became drunk on Guinness and whiskey and had to be taken back to our accommodation by tourist cyclerickshaw .
This time I was to be hosted by Irish people . I ’ d been invited to stay in Tralee with a fellow Enfield-rider and social media friend who ’ d said it was high time I visited Ireland . He knew the Enfield dealers in nearby Adare and put us in touch . Could I do a talk about the experiences I ’ d had travelling for seven years with the Enfield from India to
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