What's your earliest holiday memory?Family holidays on the shores of Lough Ree. My cousins stayed on an island in the middle of the lake, so there was lots of going back and forth on a small boat with an outboard engine. For a small child this was very exciting and my cousins were older than me so we had great adventures.
What was your worst holiday?
My wife and I were living in Belize when a friend of ours saved up and came over to travel with us for the holiday of a lifetime. He cashed all his travellers cheques and gave the cash to me because I was an experienced traveller. On the first day of our holiday, our first pit-stop was in Guatemala. We got off the bus at a service station. I went to pay for our food and discovered that my wallet had been pickpocketed, with all my money and all of his money in it. The holiday never recovered from that.
What was your best holiday?
A month backpacking with my wife (then my fiancé) to the Iguazu Falls in northern Argentina via Buenos Aires. Buenos Aires is a fantastic city, very European. We went by coach and ferry to Torres del Paine National Park in the south of Chile. It’s full of icebergs and extraordinary landscapes and fantastic contrasts. We had a month of no responsibility and just backpacking.
If budget or work were not a restriction, what would be your dream holiday?
As someone who now tries not to fly for holidays, my dream is to go to Rome by Orient Express. So it would involve luxury and a great city. I’d go from here to Paris by boat and take the Eurostar from London. Then I’d get the Orient Express in Paris and spend lots of time in Rome.
If you had your pick, who would you bring on holiday with you?
My wife and two-year-old child. Holidays are a great time to hang out together and explore somewhere new that you don’t get to do the rest of the year.
What’s your favourite place in Ireland?
The view of Sheephaven Bay in Donegal from Marble Hill. I spent most of childhood holidays there from when I was about 10 and I feel like a small part of my soul is embedded there. It’s a beautiful view but also represents the freedom and lack of responsibility of my seemingly endless childhood holidays.
Your recommended holiday reading?
I tend to read crime fiction on holidays and I usually bring US writer Harlan Coben. In Wales recently I read Ghost Light by Joseph O'Connor which is a beautifully sad book.
Where will you go to next?
This summer we went to Wales by car and ferry through Under the Thatch which provides more sustainable holidays. Next year we’re planning to go to Galicia in Spain by travelling from Southampton to Santander and Bilbao. It’s like Donegal with a Mediterranean climate which is the ideal for me. My next personal campaign will be to get the ferry running from Cork to Spain.
- Oisín Coughlan is director of Friends of the Earth Ireland
- In conversation with Genevieve Carbery