Car-free and loving it

Life experience

Sir, – Further to “Can you live car-free in Ireland?” (Weekend Review, March 11th), when I came to Kingscourt, Co Cavan, in 1951 to work in a bank, I thought life would consist of earning some money, buying a car, meeting a woman, getting married and raising a family.

Well, I don’t know if I frightened the driving instructor more than he frightened me, but I decided the car was not for me.

This led to cycling to work, and home for weekends and, eventually, touring Ireland, Wales and Scotland with various friends. When a woman I knew decided to host female foreign students, I was only too happy to bring those who wanted to on cycling tours of Ireland. There were too many attractive ones, so I never got married, but I still correspond with some of them. In more recent years, I’ve been cycling into town to meet friends for lunch, or cinema, or both, passing the traffic along the way. Now that I’m 90, I just visit friends locally, or go to the bookies. Car-free is care-free. – Yours, etc,

JAMES EVANS,

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Dublin 14.