‘Fabulous food, spectacular  wine, gambolling fawns… Bordeaux is magical’

We read books and play games and make big communal dinners which we eat outside, in view of the horse and pony in the field beside our gaff. This we do while beset by truly giant insects. There are dragonflies here that my seven-year-old son could probably ride around on, and we are introduced to the aptly named mammoth wasp, a behemoth of a creature that resembles a bumblebee that’s been stretched on a mechanical rack for a few days.

A boat trip along the Garonne teaches us that the region had been under English control for 300 years, which gets a cheer from the six English people on board, and is followed by the guide saying “Yes, we are traitors!” which gets a cheer from everyone else. A tour at one of the dozens of vineyards nearby – Château Haut-Lagrange – concludes with a wine tasting in which our impossibly elegant host regales us with facts about the picking and fermentation process, and offers us samples of four different vintages, supplemented with rillettes, charcuterie and plums picked from her own garden.

Afterwards I buy my own favourite, the 2020 Pessac-Leognan, because it’s cheapest, and feel suitably smug when she tells me it’s her favourite too. I’m even more delighted when she tells me I shouldn’t uncork it for another 10 years, in a manner which implies she genuinely believes I will be remotely capable of exercising that same restraint.

On one evening, the in-laws babysit and the remaining adults – my wife, myself, Aoife and her husband Paddy – take a trip to an actual restaurant in the city centre. It’s a thoroughly French experience, in that the food is wonderful, the wine spectacular, and we fall deeply in love with our waitress, shortly before experiencing service so bad it drives us fully insane. In the hour-long lull between our main and dessert, we look out over the city as the sun sets, casting a pinkish glow over the limestone square in front of us.

In the mornings, I take runs through the pretty neighbouring woodlands and a small nearby town. During one of these, I take a detour I presume to be legal but quickly surmise cannot possibly be, as I find myself weaving anxiously through a vineyard, apt to be arrested if I don’t leave promptly. On turning to abort, I startle a speckled fawn, who gambols away into a thicket of grapes, and off in the direction of Château Haut-Bergey, another 19th-century castle on a 15th-century estate, which looks like it’s been pulled straight from a fairytale about people who really, really like red wine.

In short it all feels quite fancy, and very, very far from any holiday I’ve had before. My childhood holidays took place in a giant caravan surrounded by my 10 siblings. Every adult holiday I’ve enjoyed since has been a rushed and budget affair or, much more often, simply trips back home to squeeze in with family in Derry or Dublin. Nearing 40, I realise I could have been saving for nicer trips like this but have balked at the idea of saving for long periods to have a holiday that’s more enjoyable, or relaxing, than sitting your driving theory test. As always happens any time I experience the finer things in life, I get used to it very quickly, and decide that this is how I will live forever more.

It’s not all smooth sailing, however. Wednesday is the hottest day of the year so far, and we spend it at a massive outdoor water park, filled with slides and pools and organised fun for all the family. My son, a tentative fellow at the best of times, abandons the more exciting attractions after about five minutes, when he suffers a clattering collision at the foot of one slide.

It may be relevant information that said clatter is caused by me; specifically, by my decision to propel myself down the same chute a little too soon after him, resulting in me sending him – and another as yet unidentified child – skyward like skittles at its terminus. He’s physically fine – the mystery boy I never see again, for all I know he may be soaring still – but it puts an end to my son’s adventuring for the day, and he spends the rest of our time there cheerfully paddling in shallower waters, as our daughter ambles around like a bouncer, pummelling slides and eating ice creams.

It’s her that catches me out, just as we’re ready to leave, and just when I realise I’ve forgotten to reapply my sun cream for six hours, and have been walking, topless, in baking sun this entire time. “Daddy” she says, pointing to the laminated mass of red, shiny skin stretching across my back and shoulders: “sunbird!”

Photography by Getty Images