Dad’s Diary

It was a deep summer’s dusk as the hills of West Cork unfolded before my weary eyes. I was driving home from England for a holiday with my three oldest children, while my wife took some quiet time with the new baby. The girls in the back slept. Seán, sitting in the front, was entranced as hills and mountains took on mysterious fluid forms and night slowly enveloped us.

West Cork is home at a deeper level. I drove within a few miles of my own house there, and within a few miles of where my grandfather was born, through the ancient country of my ancestors, which seemed to ache with memory.

I had converted our minibus to a camper van for the long trip over. I had built a plywood bunk-bed structure and improvised curtains, strapped down a little cool box as a fridge and even fitted a portaloo for when the kids can’t wait. The latter item proved itself invaluable on journey from the Isle of Wight to West Cork.

We left in the sweltering heat and made the mistake of visiting Stonhenge en route. As with every major attraction in England, you come away swearing you’ll never go back. The epically frustrating queues are unfortunately far more memorable than the attraction itself. Still, the journey took us through some beautiful villages, before the motorway shunted us across the Severn Bridge into Wales.

England was all yellow and brown, desiccated and semi-arid after months of drought. Wales grew greener as we travelled west. When at last we arrived in Pembrokeshire, it already felt like another country. We stopped for the night in a quiet little campsite by the Irish Sea. Home was just over the horizon.

Now was the moment for my improvised camper van to shine. I put out the table and cooked up some pasta, and set up the beds and curtains. The kids were incredibly excited at their wheeled home, and I took them to the beach to run off some steam. They explored caves, gazed at rock pools and climbed rocks until dusk set in. I then tucked them cosily into their beds in the van and all drifted off.

The youngest, not yet four, was missing her mum and needed some extra attention and a few extra stories before she eventually nodded off.

We had a great first night in the camper, and awoke to the strangest sight: grey clouds, and the sound of drizzle on the van’s roof. We had not seen rain in over two months.

The novelty was such that, after breakfast, we donned raincoats and went out for a walk, and relished the rain’s welcome coolness, after weeks of baking heat.

The ferry took us to Ireland, and the long road to West Cork, where my mother and father were waiting in the holiday home they had rented by the shores of Bantry Bay. We arrived before midnight, when three bleary eyed children stumbled into their grandparents’ arms. I gazed around me blankly, not quite sure where I was. It was then I knew, by the extreme levels of fatigue, that I was, once again, on holiday.