Cornwall: An Anglo-Irish family holiday
A sojourn to London, yes that’s perfectly acceptable. A weekend in Brighton, maybe even faintly hip. But to suggest that you might want to spend your annual summer holiday in Limeyland and that you may even find it quite lovely and vaguely interesting and you get a reactions like a near aggressive ‘why don’t you just go to West Cork, Kerry, Connemara?’ But Anglo-Irish relations and mild climate aside, there we went. It was the first O’Sullivan holiday en famille in nearly 20 years and so Husband politely declined as he was suddenly Very Busy In Work and Could Not Possibly Take Time Off.
My two sisters live in the south west and had been trying to get us all to the UK for years. Taking the ferry from Rosslare to Pembroke made the most financial sense when there was Grandma, Grandad, two kids, their uncle and myself travelling and a car is a must-have as much of the joy of the south west is in navigating the country lanes taking in the unspoiled ‘unbungalow-blissed’ English countryside. Also, my eldest son, aged 11, was delighted at the prospect of driving our car into a ferry while the younger, aged 6, was more mute, as he wrestled with why exactly the Titanic had sank. However, at 8.30am as we sat in the car waiting to board the 182.5 metre Isle of Inishmore, the excitement was palpable. Kids and ferries just work. They loved it.
