Sir, – Frank McNally’s adventures in the 1980s (Irishman’s Diary, August 12th) reminds me of a hitchhiking journey two decades earlier.Heading for our holidays in Galway’s Salthill, we got as far as Kinnegad, where we got a lift from a very entertaining driver in a large and very comfortable car. He explained that he was going to Longford, but as we reached the place where the roads for Galway and Mullingar divide, and despite a warning from our driver, we decided to take our chances and opted for more miles of luxury and good company and continued for Mullingar and Longford.Not a good idea. Late on a Saturday night we found ourselves in Ballygar. If anyone has been in the sparsely populated village of Ballygar close to the Galway-Roscommon border on a Saturday night, they will see only local traffic, if any at all.Unlike Frank McNally, no one offered a bed for the night, and travel to Galway from Ballygar, we were told, was reserved mostly for Christmas shopping and was otherwise almost nil. Miraculously, after what seemed a very long time, to our great relief we made it. Memory is selective and nothing remains of the ongoing journey or of that cheap holiday in Salthill, apart from the adventure of our attempts to get there all those years ago. – Yours, etc,MARION WALSH,Donnybrook,Dublin.