South-west Ireland

Of course one feels free on a holiday: that’s what holidays are for. But I have rarely felt freer than when my younger brother, two wild Irish cousins and I, all aged 16 or under, drove across Éire to the south-west tip (with, I should mention, the permission and indeed encouragement of our respective parents). Setting off from Wexford in an ancient, definitely unroadworthy VW Beetle in the days before these vehicles had any classic cachet, with not even a provisional driving licence between us, it was a miracle that we arrived in Baltimore a day later — albeit decorated in mud and twigs after kipping the night in a ditch outside Cork where the Garda had passed their torches over us and grunted, leaving us to be the gypsies we so evidently were.

Half an hour or so on from Skibereen, Baltimore town is a pretty semi-circle of pastel-painted fishermen’s cottages around a harbour spiky with masts. I am sure that these days it is a tourists’ delight, with boating activities, linen-sheeted B&Bs and fresh crab and lobster mainlined from the sea. Our stay was slightly less civilised — but nevertheless infinitely enjoyable — sleeping in a recently converted cow shed (well, I say converted) and subsisting on baked beans and whiskey. With one tank of water and, if memory serves, no electricity, we washed our hair under an outside tap on the neighbouring farm. The farmers greeted my cousins in a foreign tongue and I was impressed with their grasp of Gaelic or Celtic or whatever they spoke in those parts, only to be told later that everyone was speaking in bog Irish accents. Experiencing an accent that Irish is worth the price of the ticket alone.

It being Ireland, and it being summer, it rained much of the time. A stream ran between the two buildings that made up ‘the shack’. The major activity we indulged in was blackjack, being too wet behind the ears for poker. We played for Swan Vestas and never settled up, most of the matches used to light fires, candles, roll-ups. Of course, we stumbled to the pub a few times too: you can’t go to Ireland and not go to the pub.

A more recent summer holiday to Bantry Bay (‘subtropical’ they call the microclimate there; and if they mean tropical in terms of rainfall, not temperature, they’d be right) involved stomping through prehistoric, damp oak forest with pushchairs: hard-ish work, but worth it. Another walk along the spindly coastal fingers characteristic of this ethereally beautiful landscape — hedgerows exploding with fuchsia and montbretia and a fine mist keeping skin dewy— demanded some lateral thinking when we got too far from home for the two-year-old to cope. A couple of strong branches stuck down the sleeves of two sou’westers makes a surprisingly sturdy stretcher, and a toddler can easily be carried through rain and shine while being completely out for the count. Plus, as it turns out, a sleeping toddler can be suspended underneath a pub picnic table while grown-ups enjoy a pint. And then it’s time to tackle yet another sugar-loaf mountain.

South-west Ireland’s genius, really, is in the making of memories. And believe it or not, there’s an upside to all that rain: all the rainbows.