Dervla Murphy – Cyclist, Traveller And Writer

Dervla Murphy celebrates her 83^rd birthday today, the 28^th day of November and what an 83 years it has been.  She has spent her life cycling and travelling and writing 25 books about her adventures and her views on various political situations around the world.

Dervla Murphy couldn’t be any more Irish – there isn’t a hint of anything else in her ancestry.  Sadly, she had to leave school at the age of fourteen to nurse her mother, who was crippled with arthritis, but as her father was the local librarian, her education certainly didn’t stop. Dervla nursed her mother for sixteen years – until she was 30 – with occasional cycling trips to England, Spain, Belgium, Germany and Wales.  Dervla was only ten years old when she decided that one day she would cycle to India. In those early days of cycling, with little traffic on the roads, no one wore a helmet, let alone a reflective vest or reflective belt. Dervla had a tragic few years from 1958 to 1962.  Her boyfriend died in 1958, followed by the unexpected death of her father in 1961 and then her mother in 1962.  Although Dervla was devastated, this gave her the freedom to follow her dreams.

In 1963, Dervla Murphy began the journey she had planned in 1941.  Before going, Dervla stripped the gears off her bike, Rocinante, as she felt that was something less the repair and bought a .25 automatic pistol.  She set off in the coldest winter for years, with one change of underwear and little else. Dervla was glad of her pistol, using it to frighten off attacking wolves in Bulgaria and again in Azerbaijan, to ward off a would be attacker.  Dervla wrote a journal of her trip and letters to friends back in Ireland.  These formed her first book, Full Tilt: Ireland to India With a Bicycle. When Dervla arrived in Delhi, she was spotted cycling down the street by Penelope Betjeman, the wife of the poet John Betjeman.  Penelope invited Dervla back to her hotel for a tin of peaches and a chat about her travels.  It was Penelope who persuaded her write a book and who introduced her to publisher John Murray, who are still publishing her books over fifty years later.

Dervla never married but had a daughter in the 60s in Ireland – imagine the scandal!  Having a child did not stop her from travelling and she took her daughter, Rachel, on her first trip when she was five.   Rachel has accompanied her mother on many of her trips overseas and now lives in Italy with her three daughters.  Rachel and her three daughters accompany Dervla on her travels when time allows.

Dervla’s travels opened her eyes to the awful conditions billions of world’s population have to endure.  She tries to highlight their plight in her books.  Dervla has the ability to see a country as it is and loves to uncover inconvenient truths such as the fact Cuba offered to send medical teams to Haiti and were blocked from doing so by the Americans.  Long may her writing continue.