On the way back from the Rolling Sun book festival in Westport on Tuesday morning, I had to drop a friend to Knock airport in time to catch the 9.40am flight to Alicante. They said in Westport that an hour before the flight would be plenty of time to arrive, or enough anyway. But after a late night, we were cutting it fine even for that.
It was 8.47am and getting sweaty when the first sight of airport lights loomed up ahead. And yet, never having seen the airport before, I had to marvel briefly at its location, on a hilltop bog halfway between Charlestown and nowhere.
The weather was damp and overcast, which reminded me that when Msgr James Horan first unveiled plans for the project in the early 1980s, critics thought the site was not just too boggy, but too foggy as well.
Anyway, I dropped my friend off, then parked in the nearest available slot so that I could have a quick look around the terminal. She had already been rushed through the departures gate and security by then, in a panic, on the grounds that the flight was closing.
In the process, she temporarily lost her boarding card, a wallet, and a small amount of dignity (all recovered unharmed when the panic subsided). Only then to learn that the plane she was being rushed towards, amid international airport levels of stress, hadn’t landed yet.
I was now having a look around the terminal’s miniature museum, where exhibits include Msgr Horan’s signature fur hat, the first sod turned in the airport’s construction, and the spade that turned the sod. Also featured was a report from the Western People in October 1985 confirming that, by serendipitous chance, it was 40 years to the week since the airport’s inaugural flights.
“Things Will Never be the Same Again!” proclaimed a headline over a story that began: “An estimated fifteen thousand Mayo people turned out on Friday morning (25th October 1985) to wave, cheer and even shed a tear, as three Aer Lingus jets took off with more than 400 pilgrims from the new Connacht Regional Airport.
“It was a joyous occasion for the people of the West, and as the individuals, small family groups and rich and poor converged on the Barnacogue mountain … there were scenes reminiscent of the Pope’s visit to nearby Knock in 1979.”
With that, I headed upstairs to the cafe that overlooks the runway. And there, coming in to land, was the delayed Alicante flight, looking a lot more relaxed than my poor friend had been made to feel earlier.
[ Msgr James Horan: The ‘madman’ with a dream who got Knock airport off the groundOpens in new window ]
On the subject of delays, by the way, a report on the Western People’s website as I write this refers to Knock airport’s 40th anniversary falling “in 2026”. But that is not a contradiction of the 1985 story, it turns out. Those first departures were special charters to Rome. The airport’s official opening, and the start of scheduled flights, was a year later.
Getting back to Tuesday morning, I had – as usual – a column to file, immediately if not sooner. I also had a rental car to return in Dublin by 3pm. So the pressure was doubly on. But, as often at that time of day, visibility of a subject was still limited. Perhaps my location on Barnacogue mountain (also spelt Barnacahogue) didn’t help.
In any case, I settled on a desperate, two-part plan. First, I would have a double espresso in the airport cafe. Then, while that took effect, I would drive a bit nearer Dublin, and hope that the mental fog lifted en route. Sure enough, a few miles down the road, there was a slight break in cloud cover, where the faint outline of a column intro could be seen.
So I turned off the road again at Ballaghaderreen and went in search of a place to work. This usually means a hotel: somewhere with good wifi, power points, access to more coffee, and a quiet corner where you can spend two or three hours and not be in the way.
The Abbeyfield Hotel seeming to be such a place, I pulled in there, parked, and dragged my various accoutrements into reception. Where, I noticed, there was a certain lack of the usual facilities you expect in hotel lobbies. It turned out that no, there was nowhere I could sit down and have a coffee because the place is no longer a hotel; it’s a migrant centre now.
So I dragged my various accoutrements out again. And there being, according to Google maps, no other hotels in town, I instead sought asylum in a local cafe, in the nearest thing they had to a quiet corner. On the plus side, the fog had fully lifted now. On the minus, it was being replaced by deadline panic as I opened the laptop and, with unnecessary violence, started hammering out an intro: “There is a thing in Westport town they call the Rolling Sun …”
