Write of passage
Peter Murtagh
Peter Murtagh is an award-winning journalist and author. He spent almost 40 years in newspapers, as chief editor, foreign editor, news editor, opinion editor and managing editor. As a reporter, he specialised in long-form investigative pieces. His travel book with his daughter Natasha, Buen Camino! was a bestseller. His new book, From Tip to Top, chronicling an eight-month motorbike odyssey from the tip of South America to the top of North America, has just been published.
“Retirement,” you write in the introduction to From Tip to Top, “would not be an end but a beginning, a renewal while there was still time.” How did that journey of a lifetime change or renew you?
It renewed me by con rming my faith in, and love of, ordinary people. I came home reinvigorated by the people I met, their kindness towards me, and in letting me into their lives, however brie y. And I was also hugely enthused, for the most part, by what I saw. I have a deep love of landscape and scenery and the Andes and Rockies, the deserts, rivers and lakes, the shorelines and skies – the natural world remains glorious and wonderful.
“Of all the countries I visited, the US is the one that frightens most.” Did that surprise you and when were you most frightened? e US terri es because of what is going on there right now (Trump and all that comes with him) and what may transpire later this year (Trump and what it will mean for the rest of us). When you meet it face on, it just brings it home to you that, hell yeah, it’s real! I had some anxious moments elsewhere: in Peru, there were protesters determined not to let me through and I had to negotiate situations that could easily have got out of hand. In Colombia, I got lost on an unpaved jungle road (it was a bit like a riverbed) and wondered whether I’d ever get out. e place was also strewn with land mines.
Where there any books from childhood or your early years that le a lasting impression and perhaps instilled a desire to see the world? Absolutely! Ernest Hemingway’s A Farewell to Arms inspired me, so too the writing of John Steinbeck ( East of Eden, especially) and the songs (and life) of Woody Guthrie. When in Alaska, I briefly ran out of money, the woman who ran a campsite said I could stay for free by working in her garden. I did and felt like I was in someone else’s novel!
What advice would you give to anyone who is hurtling towards their formal retirement age?
Oh God, who am I to advise anyone?! All I know is that I have to be active and so I walk every day (about 5km) with our dogs and hill walk every weekend. And I dream dreams and because I’m retired, maybe I can live them.
What, in your opinion, is the best travel book ever written?
Well, a biker can’t get past Jupiter’s Travels
(by Ted Simon) and Long Way Round (Ewan Mcgregor and Charley Boorman) is also inspiring, and anything by my biking pal and writer, Geo Hill, is fun. For non-biking reading, e Places In Between (Rory Steward) is wonderful.
On the evening of July 12, 2023, a er 45,000km through 15 countries over eight months and across two continents, you arrived home unannounced to your wife, Moira. What did you both say in that moment?
She was in the living room of our house in Mayo, with friends and with her back to me as I walked in. One of the friends, Eugene, saw me rst and just pointed in silence and with his jaw on the oor. I just said: “Hello!” Moira turned around and gave a bit of a yelp and then said: “Oh my God. You bugger, you! I knew you’d do something like this.” And then we hugged a nice big hug.
Is there another book in Peter Murtagh and if not a book, perhaps another awfully big adventure?
Oh, I’d like to think so. A book I’d like to research and write involves an unmarked grave in London, a village in western Poland, a ve-year-old boy eeing Irkutsk in Siberia via China, to grow up in London. He was my uncle by marriage, and I want to tell his story, if I can.
From Tip to Top: e Journey of a Lifetime from Chile to Alaska by Peter Murtagh is published by Gill Books.