She was resolute about bringing Rachel up alone, and her daughter would sometimes be her sole travel companion, although she often tended to set off on her own. In 1963, once Dervla’s mother had died, she set off by bike for India, as she’d long promised herself, returning home a year later to write her first book, Full Tilt (see below).ĭervla had one daughter, Rachel, with Terence de Vere White, the then-married literary editor of The Irish Times. Continental trips followed - sporadic breaks during a 16-year stint nursing her invalid mother. She received a second-hand bicycle and an atlas on her 10th birthday and resolved that she’d one day cycle to India. Her first trip away from Ireland, at the age of 20, saw her biking through England and Wales writing a series of articles for Hibernia magazine. Born in Lismore, County Waterford in 1931, Dervla forged her way out into the world on two wheels. A straight-talking woman of passionate convictions, Dervla Murphy was a travel writer who loved a local beer, hated cruise liners (“I’d pay £10,000 not to set foot on a cruise ship”) and saw mass tourism as a “disaster”.
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