Ronan O’Gara: The holiday that became an adventure that became a mission

We’d fallen in love with La Rochelle. You either make it exclusively career-based — which means you are essentially dragging your family, sometimes against their will, with you — or you treat it as an epic family adventure

La Rochelle coach Ronan O'Gara, followed by La Rochelle Head Coach Jono Gibbes, arrive at the Stade Marcel Deflandre for the Champions Cup semi-final against Leinster. Picture: INPHO/Dave Winter

This is brought to you by my considerably better half. Jess has been stalking around the kitchen, reminding me and my column of significant moments and crossroads in this journey, many of which I’d completely forgotten about.

Six summers ago, we got out of Paris for two weeks and headed to the small Atlantic coast town of La Rochelle and the adjacent beaches of Ile de Re. It was the ideal decompression chamber after the extended grunt of the Top 14 season with Racing 92, a place with a restorative quality to it from the moment we pointed the car from town towards the island.