COLM O'GORMAN
Earliest holiday memory?
Coming back to a campsite on the Dingle Peninsula as a child to find our tent blown halfway across a field. It was pouring rain and the wind was howling around us as we chased the tent down and fought to get it back up so we could make tea on a camper stove. I was about seven, and the eight of us were in Kerry for two weeks, my dad and mam and the six of us kids all crammed into a two-room tent. It was great fun.
Worst holiday?
I spent a very weird weekend in a "haunted hotel" a few years ago. The hotel was so awful that it almost transcended bad and became good. I never saw a ghost of any kind, but the sausages they served at breakfast were both terrifying and long dead. The service was so bad that guests used to help each other out by giving cups and cutlery they hadn't used to other tables and shared toast around.
Best holiday?
Two weeks in Cape Cod.
We rented a house in Provincetown and hired bikes for all of us. No car, no phone, no hassle. It was glorious. There were great restaurants and galleries but also miles of cycle paths through sand dunes and woods with amazing unspoilt beaches. We also spent a few holidays in Kenya, south of Mombasa on the Indian Ocean. It was really beautiful there. Africa really captures your heart once you've been there. There's something almost primal about it.
If budget or work was no restriction, what would be your dream holiday?
A few weeks in Chiva-Som, a great spa resort in Thailand, and then on to Kenya for another two weeks by the Indian Ocean before heading to Mexico via a week in San Francisco.
If you had your pick, who would you bring on holiday?
My partner and kids. Holidays are real family time for me, a chance to leave everything else behind and just enjoy being together.
Favourite place in Ireland?
Connemara or Donegal. I spent a great summer in Carraroe at the Gaeltacht when I was 14 and really want to get back there for a decent break at some point.
What holiday reading would you recommend?
The Outcast by Sadie Jones. It's a debut novel that has been recommended to me by a few different people, and that's on my list to get to as soon as possible.
Where to next?
My next proper holiday will probably be to Vietnam, hopefully later this year.
In conversation with Fiona Gartland
Colm O'Gorman is executive director of the Irish section of Amnesty International