Hot topic: Why bake on the Med when you can have a 'coolcation' at home?
Before rising temperatures, the traditional sun holiday had it all: beaches, sea, some nice food and most of all, the guarantee of good weather.
It’s the summer season, and you’ve planned your getaway for months. You are heading for the sunnier climes of Spain or Portugal, even as far as Greece. The traditional sun holiday had it all: beaches, sea, some nice food and most of all, the guarantee of good weather.
The sun holiday has been with us for decades, and it's something I’ve always enjoyed; it’s a break from Ireland and the inclement weather.
This was something we all revelled in for countless summers. Come the school holidays and the quieter month of August, when the country traditionally shuts down for silly season, we all flocked to the Med.
But one would want to be wilfully ignoring the weather forecast for Europe for the last few years, not to know heatwaves are becoming more common; what was once an occasional flare-up now seems to be the norm.
I first noticed it in 2018 when a summer heatwave and drought hit Ireland and the UK. Having lived in Australia for nearly a decade, I initially welcomed that warm spell, but then the heat lingered, and I began to have second thoughts. And that was only the start of it.
The year 2022 saw the worst drought in the Iberian Peninsula for 1,200 years, but it wasn’t alone. California also experienced a megadrought, the worst in 1,00 years. The droughts also go hand-in-hand with that deadly outcome: fire. Over the past few summers, wildfires have burned across Europe in our traditional holiday countries.
Indeed, at the time of writing, Greece and Turkey are battling wildfires, with temperatures above 40C. In southern Turkey, the temperatures reached 50.5C in the southeastern city of Silopi, as reported by the BBC, with people being evacuated in the region in their thousands.
Tourists have in recent years at times been caught in the crosshairs of these extreme heat and wildfires, with tourists evacuated from holiday regions. Just recently, 5,000 people were evacuated from the island of Crete (more than half of them tourists.) And evacuation is a best-case scenario — in the Greek wildfires in 2023, there were 28 deaths and 75 people injured.
But it's not just wildfires, the extreme heatwaves can have more subtle impacts, with estimates now saying some 2,300 people died due to high heat across 12 European cities between June 23 and July 2 of this year, according to research conducted by Imperial College London. France alone saw some 480 people die due to extreme heatwaves that affected nearly the entire nation from June 19 to July 6.
The numbers and temperatures can seem improbable at the remove of, by-and-large, temperate Ireland, but once one has experienced 40C, you remember that sort of heat and how oppressive it can be.
We knew the climate was changing, but the rate of change of warming in Europe is now faster than the global average — indeed, it is the fastest-warming continent on the planet.
With all this in mind, quite a few of us have now started to do something different. Instead of heading for an oppressive Mediterranean beach, people are opting for cool-weather tourism. Cool-weather tourism, or coolcations as it is known, is the option to switch from the heat to a cooler climate country.
It’s not that we are choosing bad weather, rather we are opting to escape the heat and, in the case of many city breaks, the scourge of overtourism.
The great thing about coolcations is we don't have far to go — Ireland is right up there on the list of coolcation destinations. Countries like ours, the Scandinavian nations, and even as far flung as Patagonia in Chile and Argentina are now coming into focus for holiday makers.
It's why this year I’ll be taking my few days' holiday in Ireland and Scotland. The benefits are many if we can break away from the concept of sun worship.
My choice of holidaying in a cooler Ireland and Scotland, however, does come with some consequences. Things are more expensive here than say a sunny beach town in Spain, and hotels prices and eating out can put a real dent in holiday plans.
But then I know how much it costs to do this in Ireland already, so we can maybe opt for different approaches, an Airbnb, and cook our own meals rather than going out to restaurants each night of the holiday, or going to galleries and museums, many of which are free.
I’m not some Johnny-come-lately on coolcations, though — I knew about it before it was cool, as they say. Last summer, we went to Dingle in Kerry, the summer before, we went to Connemara. There were tourists there, but it never felt oppressive, and the weather was good, bright, but never too hot.
And it turns out, I'm far from alone. Euronews reported earlier this year there has been a 44% increase in people travelling to cooler-weather locations for their holidays, including the Nordics, Canada and Iceland.
Of course, a cool-weather holiday is a different sort of holiday. In Scotland or Ireland, lying on a beach is probably not going to be your number one priority, but if we can get over that stumbling block, there are plenty of more active opportunities on offer.
Hill-walking and mountain-climbing in Scotland or Ireland is breathtaking, one can catch a wave on some of the best surf in the world on Ireland's west coast or, as I have heard from fishing friends, go for salmon in the Baltics or even northern Russia.
It all sounds good on paper, but if coolcations take off, do we risk these cool-weather locations and countries suffering the same overtourism as our Mediterranean neighbours?
We don’t want the MacGillycuddy's Reeks to have a queue to get to the top like the Eiffel Tower, or a fjord in Norway to become the new Venice, polluted with cruise ships.
As this new trend emerges, it's up to us cool-weather nations to manage the inflow of these extra tourists coming to our nations.
Tourism is already our largest indigenous industry, so we are well used to managing crowds, but we'd better ensure the good thing about Ireland, which is that it never feels too busy, can remain while we accommodate the expected surge.
It’s a holiday option I’ll be taking for the foreseeable and one that gives me a sense of relief. I don’t have to fly south, I don’t have to suffer sweltering heat, and as I’m holidaying with the family in Ireland, I can drive there in the comfort of my own vehicle.
If Ireland is smart, we’ll be a player in coolcation opportunities, and we can do it and welcome people from around the world as we have always done — with a smile and perhaps a hot whiskey to warm them up.
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