There's nothing like a nice, relaxing holiday...

We’ve done it again. Ten days after returning from our summer holiday, we’re still suffering from exhaustion. How do we manage so often to come back from holidays even more tired than when we went? Here are a few handy tips.

Make sure that you leave home at a spectacularly stupid time of day. We had to rise at 4 a.m. for this particular holiday. That itself would have worn us out but…

Try to arrange for a particularly long journey to your destination, ideally by a very tiring form of transport. We left the house at 5.30 in the morning. We arrived at our destination at 8.30 p.m. the following day. We passed the 39 intervening hours in a car (20 hours) and on a ferry (19 hours). The ferry, while not bad, was quite old and not

fantastically comfortable. We were a bit nervous when we saw the captain (pictured) but couldn’t find out any more about him. We tried to get some information out of Tom the cabin boy, but he just smiled and said nothing. (This probably means something to older British readers!)

Arrange an itinerary when you arrive which means spending several hours in the car each day, seeing some wonderful sights, but having little time to get out and enjoy them. Make that special by having the driving duties dumped on you without notice, ensuring that you spend hours behind the wheel of a elderly left-hand drive people-carrier on some of the narrowest, drive-on-the-left roads in western Europe.

Best of all, go away with 8 other people with whom you have to spend virtually every minute of every waking hour. To add extra spice, make sure that 3 or 4 of them are completely batty and have an approach to food, organisation, personal space, peace & quiet and share of work during the holiday diametrically opposed to your own.

Finish the holiday with a return journey as punishing as the outward trip. Returning home to find an acre of knee-high grass and horrible cold, wet weather just adds the final touch!

We’ve recently been to Ireland. We went with two French families with whom we are very friendly and with whom we spent a week in Provence last year. These are lovely people who are generous of spirit and mean no-one any harm. However, we did find a fortnight a bit of a strain this time. We travelled in two cars, neither ours, and by Irish Ferries to Roslare and then spent a week in Kerry and a second in Sligo.

In truth, we tried to do far too much sightseeing although there was so much to see that none of us wanted to miss anything. Unfortunately, one of the families lost their nerve about driving on the left so Mr and Mrs A spent too much time observing the scenery from behind the wheel of a car or while navigating.



What a spectacularly beautiful place the west of Ireland is and what a fantastically expensive country it has become. One of our group was expecting to find Ireland unchanged since she last visited, 31 years ago. She was sorely disappointed with respect to prices. (The prices don't seem to have scared away the tourists though. Everywhere was very busy and we were struck by the omnipresence of French people in large numbers.) However, there is still much to enjoy, not least the endless opportunities to drink a pint of Guinness while listening to some excellent diddley-aye music in the pub.



Mrs A and I will definitely go back and when we do, we’ll definitely go ON OUR OWN! In the meantime, we’re having a week away soon to get over it all.