Campervan Therapy

Waterford’s Dunmore East offers up classic seaside holidays. Think, pirate coves ringing with people splashing and swimming until 11 pm. The Strand Inn packed to the rafters inside and out.

The cliffside park studded with scarlet montbretia and the sounds of the kittiwakes squawking. As if that’s not enough, there’s fresh hake and Dublin Bay prawns almost still moving from the fishmonger.

We’re meant to push on to Bantry, home of West Cork Literary Festival, via the motorway, but we take the coast road, because we can’t resist it.

The Copper Coast has cliffs, deserted coves, wildflower covered headlands, ancient forts, rocks sticking out of the sea like broken teeth and chimneys from its mining past – reminiscent of Cornwall but without the crowds.

There’s the odd sauna in a shepherd’s hut, that’s all. We park up overlooking Annestown’s Dunabrattin Head for lunch, home to a sea arch, fossils and a prehistoric fort. Soon a couple bowl up, joking that they’ll have two skinny lattes as I stand behind the van’s worktop.  

A stunning sculpture of Ice, fire and Water, by Colette O’Brien is a standing stone with red, white, green and blue flames. It marks the evolution of the coast here from when it was a tropical sea on the equator. An idea that totally blows all the fuses in my mind.

In Bantry’s West Lodge Hotel carpark we camp up for the princely sum of €10 a night, complete with its forested walks, tennis courts, streams running through it and tidal lake filled with oystercatchers when the tide is out. Each morning the Caha mountains, which face Bantry over the bay, disappear into magical mist. Each evening they reappear, when the setting sun paints the sky and water copper, lilac, bruised purple. A shaft of sunlight sends a silver path across the water, and it feels like a holy moment.

After the festival, we drive over the Caha mountains, which become wilder and wilder, with the Atlantic crashing into cliffs, onto coves and white sandy arcs below, the mountainside littered with boulders, gorse and heather. The road ever narrower, winding up and up.

We pull into a tiny layby for lunch and soon two horses nod their heads in through the open door of the van. Their visit feels like a rare and special gift, their mouths soft on my outstretched palm as they munch down apples I manage to find in the depths of my vegetable bag.

Kenmare is packed with cafés, pubs, and quaint shopfronts, but nothing can take from the Ring of Kerry, with its rugged mountains, its valley of lakes and emerald islands, culminating in Lough Leane.

The day ends with Tralee’s wetlands and its information about biodiversity.

Even our drive back east from Tralee to Wexford offers up Cork’s Doneraile Estate, thanks to my good old paper map (proof that they have not had their day). We stroll through Doneraile’s grounds, check out the Queen Anne house, watch grey wagtails skimming the surface of the River Awbeg. 

As we drive through Bannow’s Green Road in Wexford, we’re speechless at the long leafy tunnel of trees – it’s easy to see why Ireland is the land of myth and magic for so many visitors.