Boards, bikes and hikes: my family adventure in West Cork, Ireland

With surfing, e-biking, kayaking, hiking and history, we join an all-action family break around County Cork’s spectacular bays, headlands and beaches

At first, there is some fussing from my 10- and 12-year-old sons. “Will the water be too cold?”, “I don’t want to wear a wetsuit”, “Are there even any decent waves?”… But once their young surf instructor, Josh Mahony, appears with two boards under his arms and the kind of shoulders that suggest he could paddle south to Spain and back in his lunch break, there is only silence as they follow him into the waves.

Some hours later, having caught many waves including their first proper unbroken green ones – before today they’d only surfed more easily managed whitewater – it’s an effort to get them out.