Two of my regular travel companions recently turned 11 years old, which means we’ve been globetrotting together for about a decade. Well, when I say “globetrotting”, I mean “Irelandtrotting and a little bit on the Continent”. There are 11 of us in total in our travel group, and I believe we’ve hit the perfect formula.
We are six adults and five children, who now range in age from five to 11. Almost every year for the past 10 we’ve gone on a group holiday. We started with six adults and two toddlers, a delightful ratio. Slowly but surely they’ve swollen in ranks but we’ve always outnumbered them. It works like a dream. Whether we’ve found a hidden gem in the mountains of Portugal or booked a bit of a stinker on Airbnb, we’ve never rowed or regretted a trip.
As I write I’m lying on a sun lounger by a pool in a villa in remote-ish northern Portugal. This is our second year in a row in this area. After booking a bit of a hole in Mayo a couple of summers back, we decided to try to make our pooled money go further on the Continent. Setting parameters for a group this size is important. We wanted a pool. We wanted a room for each adult or each couple and at least one large room for the children. We started off hoping to avoid rental cars but soon learned that affordable villas with pools for 11 people within walking distance of a commercial centre are like unicorns. So we agreed to hire cars.
Once you decide to eschew traditional touristy areas, your money obviously stretches a great deal more. Last year we spent a week each in two villas about an hour apart and an hour from the Ryanair hub in Porto. We split the accommodation costs evenly between the six adults – just a couple of hundred euro each per villa. Two of us are single and childfree and we get our own rooms, so it feels like a very fair deal. There’s an unspoken rule that our bedrooms are sacred ground, not to be invaded by tiny wet feet or sticky hands.
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The seven deadly things you should never buy a child at Christmas
This group feels like family. We’ve added three children to the mix and brought babies to campsites in France and remote Donegal islands
Holidaying as a single, childfree person has many positives. Freedom of choice, no ties to the school holiday calendar (unless you’ve gone into teaching) and only one flight to pay for. There are obviously drawbacks too. Loneliness, lack of other people to share views, experiences, meals and safety concerns with. With a ready-made travel gang, it feels like one giant family.
I promised myself that I wouldn’t write a single word more about T****r S***t, but it really does feel apt here. In Swift’s song The 1 from her Folklore album she sings: “We were something don’t you think so, rosé flowing with your chosen family.” I’ve found myself singing that line to myself a few times this week, not only because we include many, many boxes of wine in our communal shopping hauls. This group feels like family. We’ve added three children to the mix and brought babies to campsites in France and remote Donegal islands. We’ve done Disneyland Paris and a wild stormy New Year in Sligo. We mind each other, spread out the chores and invoke a “it takes a village” approach to the childcare.
We often dream of creating a year-round version of this annual trip but it would involve a lot more admin and agreement than just a week or two a year. If communal living worked in this capitalist world, everyone would be doing it. Rule rigidity, disagreements over the division of labour, parenting differences and a million other factors would surely disrupt the harmony at the four-week mark. When you’re on a fortnight break from reality you can let almost anything go, but with time the even dispersal of the holiday crisps would become a sticking point.
As I wrap up, three of the children and one of the “meddling aunts”, as we’re lovingly dubbed, are diving for pool toys. Two of the adults involved in a “tanning war” are accusing each other of looking a bit lobsterish and some others are sampling a refreshing pineapple drink from the exotic minerals aisle in the local Pingo Doce supermarket, a place where the locals look at us like the aliens we are. Irish tourists are not really the norm here, and at the risk of sounding insufferable, that’s just how we like it. Even if our Duolingo Portuguese really doesn’t get us beyond pointing, miming and uselessly slipping into our cúpla focail when flustered.