Despite the soulless accommodation and a strange sense of timelessness, Trabolgan has plenty to keep the kids happy, writes Hilary Fannin
WHEN I WAS a young child, my mother, who was a singer, did a couple of seasons at Butlins. Sharing the stage with Danny Cummins, Rose Tynan and other performers, she would belt out "Jake the Peg, diddle iddle iddle dum" or a frothy version of Three Little Maids from School, and I would sit, quaking with nervous excitement, in the raucous audience. Butlins delighted and terrified me - it was a world apart from our sedate suburban road.
I was reminded of those heady days when I drove along the lush green driveway of Trabolgan Holiday Village in east Cork recently, two sporty boys in the back seat and more than a little trepidation in my soul. In truth, holiday villages are not really my thing, but with offspring who live, eat and breathe football, and just about any other sport that involves a stick and a ball, I've become accustomed to swallowing my yearnings for lofty culture and market-browsing and learnt to get on with the action.
Trabolgan is built on the site of the Fitzgerald family seat (if you know what I mean). The great old Trabolgan House, which once dominated the verdant 1,500-acre estate, had, at various times in modern history, housed the Army, an Irish college and overseas engineers involved in the building of Whitegate oil refinery. The majestic old house was eventually demolished, and the estate, then under the ownership of a Dutch pension fund, was reborn as an upmarket holiday camp for weatherproof Europeans. That scheme bit the dust, however, and after being bought by a director of English holiday chain Pontin's, Trabolgan evolved into its current incarnation in the 1990s.
Nowadays, the stately chestnut trees, the blossoming rhododendrons and the occasional bony hare and curious seagull share their habitat with 172 self-catering houses, a caravan park, various outdoor and indoor sports facilities and a village centre. The centre, around which the houses and activities cluster, comprises a small supermarket, a family restaurant, a fast-food outlet, an amusement arcade, a couple of bars, a small bowling alley, a "leisure suite" and a tropically warm indoor swimming pool on the site of the old stately home (one imagines those long-dead Fitzgeralds must be rotating in their sarcophaguses like rotisserie chickens).
We arrived at Trabolgan on a Friday evening after what felt like a week in the car (largely due to the lunacy of trying to uncoil ourselves from the M50 in Dublin that lunchtime) and were met by exceptionally friendly staff and a strange, not altogether unpleasant, enclosed summer-camp atmosphere. We exchanged our grown-up woes for a key to our new home, holding out our arms to be wreathed with red wristbands on which the word "resident" was somewhat ominously printed in thick black ink.
Having dumped our luggage - football shirts (kids), bottle of Prosecco (adults) - in our rather soulless abode (the accommodation more or less resembles any 1970s housing scheme you care to mention, leaning towards an industrial practicality rather than any particular aesthetic), we headed to the Cove, the family bar and entertainment centre.
At the height of summer, according to entertainments manager Lisa Bradley, Trabolgan houses up to 1,200 guests. Over the season (March to October), Bradley, along with her team of just 10 Bluecoats - all young, energetic entertainers - organises family and adult events, including cabaret, karaoke, quizzes and talent shows. The team also provides everything from the pizzazz at family discos and the doggone on country and western nights to daily children's activities such as dance classes and art-attack sessions. Bradley's enthusiasm for her job, which appears almost vocational, is a revelation, especially to someone who would rather eat Angelina Ballerina (a featured act) and her pumps than entertain other people's children for a living.
The following day, Saturday, the campus was warmed by a pale sun and shrouded in a mellow east Cork haze, and we played tennis (I say played - my six-year-old son and I really just took turns tripping over the rackets).
Later the boys revelled in the AstroTurf football pitch, bounced on trampolines and even tried out the go-kart racing track. It was fun. Sure, the crazy golf course has seen better days, but there are plenty of other activities: archery, abseiling, climbing, indoor sports. There are a couple of playgrounds and even a little pond, where a handful of tranquil toddlers in life jackets paddled plastic boats. But really, the key factor in making the weekend enjoyable for the children, and tolerable for the adults, was that we pretty much had the place to ourselves. Due to a cancellation by a large group who were due to take over Trabolgan for that entire weekend, the centre was operating well below capacity, and there were just a handful of families on site, sharing what felt like a very large, well-stocked back garden.
Even so, and I know I sound like a parsimonious old bag, by Sunday afternoon I was ready to hit the road. The pool, with its wave machine and twisting water slide, had been particularly enjoyable, the leisure activities were welcome, and it was terrific to have the chance to play with the children for a weekend without the phone ringing and the supermarket beckoning, but, ultimately, that strange timelessness and relentless pre-packaged one-size-fits-all happy-camperness that was such a hallmark of those long-forgotten Butlins days kicked in and the enclosure began to feel a little oppressive.
Not a bad choice for an off-peak weekend, then, but at the height of the season you'd need your tap-dancing shoes well polished and your happy face screwed on tight.