This year I went to … Brittany, France

“The best part was how relaxing it was and how great the facilities were.”


Brian Padden
A Belmullet man exiled in Cork

We went to Brittany in France at the end of June with the kids, Liam (9), Conor (7) and Cara (5) although if every week was like last week for a Mayo man in Cork, there'd be no need to go anywhere for holidays! This was our main holiday of the year but we had been up to Belmullet for a few days around Easter.We went to France as we'd been there the past three years in a row, we go with Keycamp and stay in a mobile home on the campsites there and find it really great. It’s very relaxing as the campsites over there have so many facilites for the kids to be entertained. I keep telling them that we used to go to the bog on holidays but they don’t believe me. We can get the ferry from Cork right to Roscoff, once you get to the ferry you can relax straight away.
It also helps that you can load up the car with all sorts of rubbish, surfboards and hurleys even. The hurleys get a lot of weird looks from the French - ‘look at the crazy Irish with sticks’.
The best part was how relaxing it was and how great the facilities were, there was no real bad part but the weather wasn’t great for a couple of the days but there is still plenty of things to do as they have indoor pool complexes on site. It was also great to get away from the constant doom and gloom in the media.
Overall it's not cheaper going to France if you’re going on the ferry, than staying in Ireland but food and drink are cheaper over there, noticeably so.
With number four arriving soon I don’t think we'll be going anywhere foreign for the holidays next year, it might be a case of back to the Mullet for some fishing and a bit of hurling back in Carne!