Seamus Walsh (b. 1944)

Seamus Walsh grew up with bicycles. His father owned a bicycle shop in Monasterevin, which he set up in 1946, during a time when people cycled everywhere and business was booming. Seamus recalls the setting up of the Midlands Cycling Club in which his father was closely involved, and he remembers great days out at sports meetings where cyclists would race around a grass track. Seamus Walsh’s grandfather was a carter from the area who transported stone and gravel from the local quarry for road construction. Seamus’s father drove a lorry for CIE prior to 1946, and also ran a hackney business which was busy during the war years transporting people to the dances in the CYMS Halls in the local towns. Seamus tells a most interesting story about transport during the Emergency period, when two CIE lorry loads of turf were regularly driven from Monasterevin to Dublin and once unloaded, one lorry would tow the other home to save petrol with was heavily rationed.