Galway bus company boss reflects on 5,500km Ukrainian rescue mission

A Williamstown bus driver is back home this week after he and seven others undertook a marathon 5,500km mission across Europe and back – bringing supplies to the Ukrainian border and returning with eight fleeing refugees.

Aidan Geraghty, who runs Geraghty Travel out of Castlerea, describes the journey – the equivalent of driving from Williamstown to Dublin 28 times in five days – as having left a lasting effect on him and his seven companions.

Aidan says the trip was prompted by his 16-year-old daughter Gemmisha the weekend before St Patrick’s Day when they were watching the news coming out of Ukraine.

“We were sitting watching the TV and they were loading aid onto CIE buses and sending it out on trucks; my daughter said, ‘why can’t we do something like that?’ And I sort of said, ‘we can’,” he laughs.

By the following Tuesday, March 15, they were on the road having raised money through a GoFundMe campaign and collected donations of vital supplies to bring with them.

“We decided we’d go with a full bus – bring the stuff out and bring people back,” recalls Aidan.

They weren’t going to travel alone and with them were three other bus drivers – Michael Roddy, Tom Jennings and Austin Waldron – all of whom could take turns with Aidan as they made the trek across the continent.

Aidan’s mechanic, PJ Darcy, was also on board should they run into any mechanical issues, as was Grace Kennedy, a lecturer in NUIG who Aidan met at Ballybrit where there was a collection of donations bound for refugees on the Polish border. Gemmisha was also on board, and PJ’s daughter Aoibhe, a second year medicine student at NUIG joined them.

Read the full story in this week’s Connacht Tribune, on sale in shops now – or you can download the digital edition from www.connachttribune.ie