One man who won't be booking an advance holiday in Europe next summer is Gerry Moran, whose rain-drenched quest for the sun in Brittany almost ended in a trip to Lourdes to pray for a weather cure.
If the rain in Spain falls mainly in the plain - where does the rain in France fall? In Brittany, that's where. And bang in the middle of our camping site. Great big French blobs of it. Beaucoup de French blobs of it. So many blobs of it that we practically had our very own private piscine outside our caravan (mobile home, if you prefer) door.
It rained as we boarded the ferry for France; it rained as we disembarked, and it seemed to rain every 10 minutes thereafter. And what's the difference between French rain and Irish rain? None really except it rains cats and frogs in France as opposed to cats and dogs at home.
This was not what we travelled all the way to France for - bucketfuls of Brittany rain. We went there for sun, fun and a fabulous time. And did we think of bringing rain gear? We did not. We brought shorts, T-shirts, summer dresses, sandals. We brought sun hats, sunglasses, sun cream, sun beds - we brought everything but sunshine.
But, hey, you make the best of it. You want to know how to barbecue in a light drizzle? Ask me. You want to know how food tastes after being barbecued in a light drizzle? You do not. But soggy comes close.
Soggy sizzled sausages - if that's not a contradiction. And it is. But so too is a wet summer holiday. So much for bikinis, brown backs and bronze midriffs. So much for Brittany.
But as I said - you make the best of it. You huddle together with your loved ones round the caravan table, look out at the pouring rain and tell stories. Like hell you do. You listen to a litany of complaints, that's what you do.
"We should have gone to Spain." "We should have gone to Tramore." "We should have stayed at home." And that was just me. What we really should have done, of course, was bring raincoats, Wellington boots, woolly jumpers, galoshes, and gigantic umbrellas.
Because T-shirts and shorts are no match for French rain.
In the meantime - rain time, that is - you adopt Plan B (i.e., you drive). Anywhere. Any village. Any town. Any place to get out of your claustrophobic, crowded, cramped caravan. And so, instead of being by the pool with a grande bière in one hand and a great novel in the other, you find yourself cruising the aisles of the supermarché admiring aubergines and artichokes and the 52 varieties of tinned sardines that they have over there.
And when you're not in the supermarché spending your euro, you find yourself mooching about museums and historic sites. This may well fill vast gaps in your knowledge, but it does absolutely nothing for your children's boredom level, which is now in the high 80s, a place you thought the temperature might be.
On the plus side, if you want to call it that, you get to teach your kids how to play poker, twenty-fives and gin rummy. For money. Your money. And you get to appreciate real French music as in the CD I bought by Les Frères Morvan - The Morvan Brothers, three sixtysomethings from central Brittany who sound like a tribe of native Indians gargling, and not always in unison. After a week or so, however, you get used to them and find yourself gargling along.
Still it rained. And so it came to pass that I found myself studying my map of France with a view to driving to Lourdes. For a cure. For the rain. But I don't think they're into meteorological miracles down there. Besides, things could have been worse. Take, for instance, our campsite neighbours: an unfortunate Wexford man and his wife, with three kids, two of them in nappies, none of whom could even hope to appreciate large aubergines or small museums.
Meanwhile, regarding next year's summer holidays, I am seriously considering Tramore. It's nearer. It's cheaper. And it couldn't possibly be as wet!
