'The true love and affection that Westport has given me is overwhelming'

One year on after a serious motorcycle crash, a Westport man has been overwhelmed by the kindness of people in the town.

When Noel Moran lay trapped under the motorbike on the ground on September 21, 2025, unable to reach his phone, a terrifying thought crossed his mind: “I’m not going to get to say goodbye to anybody.” He closed his eyes, thinking it was the end.

But it wasn’t to be. And in the twelve months since that near-fatal motorcycle accident, Noel has discovered something he never expected—that the simple kindness he’d shown others throughout his life in Westport had created a web of love and support that would ultimately help save him, and sustain him through the darkest moments of recovery.

“I got very, very lucky when it comes to surviving,” Moran reflects, still processing the magnitude of what happened and what has followed.

The accident

What was supposed to be just “a ride out and a little spin in the countryside” turned into a fight for survival. After hitting a pole, Moran knew immediately his pelvis was in trouble. Then he hit the ground. For nearly two hours he lay there, trapped, before Mary Kilcoyne found him. She was with her daughter Rachel and son Frankie. He would spend four weeks in hospital, emerging with injuries that required stents in his chest and extensive rehabilitation.

“I remember it happening. I can tell you how I hit the pole. I knew my pelvis was in trouble. And then I hit the ground. And then after that, it was in everybody else’s hands,” he recalls.

Among those hands were junior doctor Hilary Hughes, who stopped to help, and Dr Sultan, the physician who placed the stents and became a driving force in Moran’s recovery. “If you were a cat, you’d be wiping out eight lives in one go,” the doctor told him with a smile during their first meeting after Moran woke from a coma. “He seemed to take great joy in telling me that two or three times—and then telling me to get out of bed when my leg wouldn’t work.”

But it’s what happened after the hospital that has truly overwhelmed Moran. The response from Westport has been nothing short of extraordinary.

“I’ve had Mass said for me in Knock. I’ve had Mass said for me out in Aughagower by a lady who got a Mass held out there. I had a gentleman who approached me only a few weeks back—he was in Germany when he heard of my accident and they lit candles out there. I don’t particularly know that gentleman very well,” Moran says, his voice filled with wonder.

“It’s a lot to take when somebody walks up and says, ‘Yeah, I heard what happened to you, and we lit a candle for you in the hope that you’d make it.’ It’s been very overwhelming.”

The gestures, both grand and simple, continue to this day. A lady in her 80’s brought shopping to his door to make sure he was eating properly. People have driven him to appointments in Galway at the drop of a hat, sitting and waiting for hours before bringing him home. Just before our interview, two people stopped him in the street to wish him well.

“I had a guy knock on my door a couple of weeks ago. Hadn’t seen me, came in to check and see how I was, asking if I needed something,” he says. “People have had to go out of their ways to get my number just to send text messages.”

For Noel, this outpouring has become integral to his healing—not just physically, but emotionally and spiritually.

“It’s important for me to tell these people how they have been important to my recovery, because of that, it’s kind of given me that boost to keep driving forward and not dwell on the negative,” he explains. “When I am having a bit of a quiet moment or a dark moment, that’s what’s helping me too, because I keep thinking, not only am I doing it now for myself, but I’m now doing it for the people who showed me all that kindness and respect.”

He’s kept every card, every mass card—unusual for someone who describes himself as decidedly not a hoarder.

“I will for the rest of my life, so that I will always remember what has been done for me.

“I’ve seen a side of people that just—no matter how your day is going—they’ve now made me think, ‘Okay, this is for them.’ So if I get well, I’m not just getting well for myself. I’m getting well because of the kindness, the respect I’ve been shown, the help that I had from the doctors. I would be disrespectful if I didn’t take care of myself, if I didn’t try to get well, if I didn’t make myself better. It would have been all for what?”

Simple philosophy

Moran was raised with a simple philosophy: “We were brought up to say hi to everybody, talk with everybody, wave at everybody, and we did it in such a way that we never expected anything back. It wasn’t done to get anything back.”

His family never saw differences in people—no religion, creed, or financial status mattered. “Everybody was everybody. We talked with everybody that wanted to talk to us, sometimes even when they didn’t,” he explains laughing.

He never gave it a second thought, never expected that kindness to return in any form. But now, “all of a sudden, it’s on my lap. I’m thinking about it,” he says. “The true love and affection that Westport has given back to me in this time has been really overwhelming. It really has. It’s something I never expected.”

What makes Westport special, Noel believes, isn’t just the physical town—the familiar shape of Bridge Street, Shop Street, James Street, ‘the lap’ as locals call it. “You take people out of it, all you have is buildings and materialistic stuff. But in a town like Westport, the people literally make Westport. The locals make it.

“Westport has a real affection about it, has a nicety about it—you’re not going to get the extra that you get here,” he says. “It’s a friendlier, more open, lovely place to be. And I’m saying that as a local, so you know, might come across as biased, but I think the proof is in the pudding—the amount of people that come here and stay here.

“Westport still has managed to hang on to a lot of the niceties, the friendliness, which I still think is very different. You can still go up and down the town here and talk with people, have a chat, meet somebody. It is an exceptional place. It really is.”

A message of thanks

“It’s really important for these people to know how much I am grateful for everything they’ve done,” he emphasises. “The warmth and care that people throughout Westport have shown—I feel it’s really important to say thank you to them.”

His recovery is going well, he reports, though the journey isn’t over. But he faces it with a new understanding of what community truly means, and what his place in it has always been—even when he didn’t fully realise it.

“If you could bottle it, there’d be millions made out of it,” he says of the Westport spirit. “But you just have to experience it to feel it. It comes down to one thing and one thing only: the people in it.”