A sun-worshipper’s guide to taking a summer staycation
Normally, at this time of year, we are starting to get excited for the summer holidays. Normally, we would be making sure the passports were comfortably in date and maybe getting ourselves sorted with euros or dollars. Normally, we might be thinking about our holiday wardrobe, what to wear poolside and then out for dinner. Normally, we would be counting down the days until we can set an out of office on our work emails. Normally.
But of course we are not living in normal times. In normal times, running around from the school gates to the office, to the gym, the shops, the doctor’s or dentist’s surgery means we arrive at the summer months champing at the bit to get the hell away from the real world and onto a sun lounger for a week or two.
This year, it’s not the running around that has us in desperate need of a holiday, quite the opposite. Everything from our jobs to children’s schooling and entertaining has been done at home – and we have never needed a break more.
Despite all the “will they, won’t they” chat about air bridges, going abroad remains unlikely due to the rule that anyone entering the UK must isolate for 14 days. And so, notwithstanding the ongoing rumours that pressure from the aviation and tourism sectors will result in this measure being reversed at the end of the month, staycations are looking like the only viable option for those wanting to get away this summer.
Staycations are lovely things that many of us indulge in every year. But there are a few guiding principles that you sun worshippers stuck here at the mercy of the British weather could do with knowing before setting off on your holidays.
Growing up I spent every single summer in Galway in the west of Ireland, a glorious part of the world mostly known for stunning scenery and seafood and (I really cannot stress this enough) lots of rain. The people of Connemara and their attitude to rain could be likened to the Inuit people with snow. It’s not a binary state of: it’s raining, or it is not raining. There’s that rain that just hangs in the air like condensation coating you with a film of water as you walk through it, there’s the sideways rain that drenches one of half of you and leaves the other half bone dry, there’s the lesser-spotted “movie rain” where it looks – and feels – as though someone is upending a full bucket of water onto you in the way you see in the movies, but rarely in real life.
As a result of this meteorological consistency, the rule is always to pack waterproofs and wellies as well as shorts and T-shirts and a swimsuit. The swimsuit might seem like you’re pushing it, but at least it doesn’t take up too much space in your bag. There might not be much swimming done, but by God, you’ll walk the legs off yourselves. Up big hills and down through valleys, walking is often the only feasible outdoor pursuit as games of tennis are rendered miserable as the thwack of the soggy ball will only result in a face full of manky rainwater – having your eyes squeezed shut as your opponent attempts a return shot does not make for a Grand Slam quality game.
My memories of staycations as a child are not wholly rain-soaked, miserable affairs nor are they solely sun-dappled Arcadian adventures. But they are happy and so often funny
So instead of flip flops or lovely summer sandals, sensible walking boots that don’t give you blisters would be a sound investment. Swimming might be an option, but as likely as not it’ll be bloody freezing, and given as I was doing it off the west coast of Ireland (ie in the unfettered frostiness of the Atlantic) may I also advise: a wetsuit.
Being in Ireland in July or August means it rains, but it’s not necessarily freezing and the humidity is not to be laughed at. So the irony is that while you’re wrapped up in unbreathable waterproofs to keep the rain off, inside that plastic-wrapper-for-humans you’re sweating buckets and wind up just as soaked after minimal amounts of physical exertion. Ah, summers at home!
Once you arrive in a pub or cafe to take shelter from whichever kind of rain it is you’ve just been marching about in, the first thing you have to do without even thinking is strip off that light but bloody impregnable
jacket. As do all other patrons upon arrival and so every single window is fogged up and dripping. The air thick with the fug of walkers’ sweat and exhaustion. When you’ve refuelled, it’s impossible to know if you’re heading back out into the rain, or if all that really is just condensation.
Next up it’s time to get some nosebag to get those blood sugars back up. No tapas and sangria or crusty French baguette with a carafe of local wine. A bowl of hearty soup and a ham and cheese sandwich on white sliced pan, more like. The lunch of champions. All washed down with a pot of tea or, if you’re feeling fanciful, a refreshing beer. You could even find yourself eating a sandwich you made yourself out of its tin foil wrapper while precariously balancing your flask of tea as you try to figure out if there’s a way to sit comfortably on a log.
This is all manageable once you know you have a lovely holiday cottage or hotel room to return to – preferably with an inviting bath tub to soak in with a glass of wine before dinner. Not, as I experienced for many summers as a child, a caravan. My mother and I were often invited out to the holiday home of a family member on the Aran Islands off the coast of Galway. It was the Eighties, in Ireland. The idea of anyone having a second home was still unusual and seemed enormously extravagant to me.
The cottage was a tiny little two-bed place, but our hosts didn’t want to deny themselves the luxury of an extra guest or two due to the building’s physical limitations – so a tiny caravan was placed in the driveway. Picture that episode of Father Ted where they try to go on holiday and find themselves in a caravan with Graham Norton trying to hold an Irish dancing competition – that kind of a thing – only smaller. As a child it was a huge adventure, though I don’t think my sun worshipping, bath-loving mother was a fan of having to sprint from the driveway into the house in her dressing gown during one of those downpours just to use the loo. Nowadays, caravans are far better equipped so if you find your over-excited other half has booked you into one on the north Norfolk coast for a week, don’t fret, I’m sure it’ll be lovely.
My memories of staycations as a child are not wholly rain-soaked, miserable affairs nor are they solely sundappled Arcadian adventures. But they are happy and so often funny – being stuck together indoors, having had enough of the rain, we would get up to all sorts of mischief. I remember picnics by the lake my uncles fished on and swimming with my cousins, building sandcastles and cowering behind windbreakers on the beach as we tried to keep the sand out of our sandwiches, I remember cows on the beach. You wouldn’t get that in Cyprus.
As this pandemic rumbles on and the need for respite continues to build, we will, hopefully, find ourselves able to go on holiday safely once again. But remember, just because the holiday might not start with hopping on a plane or involve setting a 5am alarm to get your towel on to a prime poolside sun lounger, it doesn’t mean it will make for memories any less meaningful. And you could still get sand stuck in your sandwiches in Spain.