After a fruitless search to find holiday accommodation for her family Leona O'Neill decided when the heatwave arrived that a 'staycation' was a better plan than venturing abroad. That was until the weather broke and the rain started
A FEW months back I began pondering where the O'Neills would go on their summer holidays.
Money, as with everyone these days, is pretty tight so two weeks in Disneyland or a villa in southern Italy wasn't really an option. So I pondered and I pondered some more and I didn't really do anything else. Then I looked at my calendar in work two weeks ago and it had 'summer holidays' blocked off in pink and I couldn't believe the holidays had crept up on me so soon. So with just two weeks to go I frantically looked around for somewhere to go that wouldn't require me hitting the credit union for a loan. I thought of taking the ferry to Scotland and renting a house in the Highlands and then exhausted that idea because of the expense. I thought I'd seek out relatives in nice places who wouldn't mind a family of six landing on their doorstep. I pondered a road trip in one of those big mobile homes but knew that would all end in tears and then I thought of good old Donegal - where we have went for the past seven or so years. Donegal never lets me down. So I went on holiday home websites and I searched for three days and three nights for somewhere nice. I sent hundreds of emails to people asking if their properties where available. I drove myself demented trying to get somewhere large enough to fit the six of us, somewhere that wasn't perched on a cliff and somewhere that didn't cost the same as a week in Portugal. I was offered sheds for £600 or three nights in a hotel for £1,000 and accommodation that was so remote it wasn't even on a map. The quest for a reasonably priced house in a lively area totally consumed me. Then the heatwave arrived and I guessed that a 'staycation' - where we go days here and there based from home - was a brilliant idea. I planned an itinerary involving long walks on Donegal beaches and treks up Donegal mountains. What could go wrong?
Sure wasn't Ireland warmer than Spain these days? So on the first day of our holiday it rained what looked three months' worth of rain on Derry and winter returned. You couldn't have stepped outside the door without looking like you were the beast that emerged from the deep. So we went to the very exotic location of Tesco when the rain eased off. Negotiating the flooded streets of Derry was every bit as exciting as any water park. That's what I told the kids.
I got chatting to some friends about the whole family holiday subject and was surprised by the nightmare scenarios that came forth. A friend of mine hired a caravan for her six kids in Bundoran. The overall living space was on par with a medium-sized bathroom. It rained hard for 10 days, the entire duration of the holiday. There were hailstones the size of tennis balls. The only one who dared venture out in the wilds was her husband, for emergency supplies - like wine, chocolate and The Irish News. Another couple saved up to take their two young kids away on their first foreign holiday, determined that having children would not impinge of their globe-trotting aspirations. Their eight-year-old boy fell down the last four steps of the plane when they reached their destination, broke his arm and leg and had to be carried around their fancy resort by his father in sweltering heat.
There was also, understandably, an advanced level of complaining. She goes to Donegal every year now. A friend of mine took his kids camping near Magilligan during the Troubles. The campsite was on the edge of the prison. When he needed the bathroom in the middle of the night and the campsite toilets looked like a bridge too far he answered the call of nature on an electric fence and ended up having to be rushed to hospital.
Another friend took her family to a fancy hotel in Dublin recently and attempted to have a sneaky cigarette out the window of her non-smoking room. The smoke alarms activated and the hotel was evacuated, the guests all out on the street in their pyjamas. As she stood there in her nighty, her children harangued her about always telling the truth and to confess to the fire brigade about smoking, therefore facing arrest by gardai. Luckily for her the chief fire officer came out to inform the guests that it was a smoking toaster - and not a smoking Derry woman - in the kitchen that was to blame for the emergency. So with all those nightmare stories in my mind, I've made peace with the fact that we're staying home this year. It'll save us getting electrocuted, arrested or breaking bones.
? ? NOT VENTURING FAR: Holidaying at home can be just as much fun as going abroad