on the road less travelled in Ireland and france

By Conal Healy

One of my abiding memories of France was pitching a tent in the Bois de Boulogne, Paris. The year was 1978. I had just finished school and backpacking around Europe with my girlfriend.

In those pre-internet days, I had to reply on my father’s membership of the Automobile Association to find somewhere to stay in the French capital. In those day going to France (from Ireland) was regarded as an adventure.

Air travel was expensive, to get from Dublin to Paris involved two train trip and a 28-hour ferry crossing from Rosslare to Le Harve. (Today, you can fly from Australia to Ireland in quicker time.)

The French police, again before the days of the European Union, were suspicious of any students, particularly foreigners. We were warned to always carry our Irish passports, in case we were stopped and asked to produce our “Papiers”.

The campsite was on the banks of the Seine, within walking distance of the Metro, is still there. (They charge about $280 per night in summer.)

In nearly 40 years of travelling, I have backpacked around Europe (usually by train), driven in America and taken family holidays along the east coast of Australia – from Portland, Victoria, to the Daintree River in Far North Queensland.

I’ve shared rooms in hostels, squeezed four of us into a motel “family suite” (in Outback Australia, relaxed in top class resorts and chilled in the air-conditioned bliss to a hotel room in high summer in Australia.

Then I discovered Airbnb and fell in love with it.

That was in 2017. We – my partner, Fran and I – have been using the application since then. We have stayed in places as diverse as Claude Road, Tasmania, to Malton in England, Leith in Scotland, Achill Island, in Ireland.

In 2022, we decided to use Airbnd for a six week long holiday through Ireland (two weeks) and France (four weeks).

STYLE: Most Airbnb’s have their own style, some are converted dairy bales, others can be a former church, or even a tree-hut. Sometimes the stay is described as “funky”, or “quirky” this translates as “different to a standard hotel room”. It usually reflects the taste of the owner. You have to ask yourself if you could put up with this décor for the time you are staying there.

The “quirkier” the Airbnb can indicate that the accommodation might have been the work of a home handyperson, or that it might not meet local authority building standards.

We have considered a tree-house in the Auvergne, a floating home in the Loire Valley and a chalet high in the French Alps.

LOCATION: There are some places where it is impossible to find economy-style lodgings. (That means they want several hundred dollars, per night, for a room the size of chicken coop.) When this happens we broaden our search area.

When we wanted to visit York, in the north of England, we found the accommodation in the area overpriced. We found a great place, Malton, Yorkshire. It is a nice sandstone village, halfway between York and Whitby.

(Whitby is a hidden gem of a place. There is a Captain Cook museum, a nice castle and quaint cobble-stone streets. Whitby is famous for its regular Goth Festival – it was the first place Count Dracula landed when he left Transylvania in the book Dracula by Irish writer Bram Stoker. The town – according to food critic Rick Steins – also serves the best fish and chips in the world.) The fish and chip shop at Malton also has some pretty damn good food too.

In Paris we’ve stayed in the less fashionable 10^th arrondissement, on the Canal St Martin, but it was close to one of the main Parisian train stations, Gare de L’Est.

We are happy to consider the road less travelled when looking for accommodation. Give it a go.

PRICE: This can be a factor. Usually I will look for somewhere that is around $100 per night (for two people). But will add $10/$20 extra depending in the location, facilities. So for a 30 day holiday, the budget begins at $3000.

This does not apply with we are looking for an “Experience”. This is our treat to ourselves. It usually is out of budget, utterly ridiculous but magnificent.

We once paid $340 to spend one night in a farmhouse barn/converted cottage in rural Tasmania in autumn. Our Experience in Paris in 2019 was $682 for three nights in an apartment in Canal St Martin in April.

Are the Experience worth it? We usually make a point for making those stays something to remember.

In Tasmania, Fran and I will recall sitting in a wood-fired hot tub, under a mulberry tree being watched by farm animals while sipping ice-cold bubbly.

In Canal St Martin it was riding the usual for Paris coffin-small lift to the beautiful apartment overlooking a courtyard. Passing the three people moving a fridge (and an oven) down the narrow stairway being a bonus.

FACILITIES: A place with no cooking facilities mean you usually have to go out for meals, even if you just want a cup of tea and a slice of toast. So, for us, a kitchen is good. It gives us freedom to cook something, microwave a takeaway, make a picnic, or explore cupboards.

If you are on the road for a while, then somewhere with a washing machine and a dryer is a must. A washing machine allow you to wash garments. It reduces the amount of clothing you have to pack for a holiday.

For the 2023 trip, we booked alternating Airbnbs – the first with a washing machine, the next stay won’t have them, the third apartment will see us reaching for detergent to launder our “smalls”.

At one Airbnb in Sligo, in the west of Ireland, there was a washing, but no dryer. So every heating radiator was festooned overnight with our freshly laundered underwear.

Do we opt for a bath? Or shower? Fran loves a long soak in a bath, so an Airbnb with a tub is more attractive to her. I am happy with a shower – bonus points if reviewers mention “lots of hot water”.

Sometime baths can be problematic. At a Victorian Airbnb farm stay, the bath had a forest view picture window – but was fed by a rainwater tank so it felt like you were bathing in a large cup of weak tea.  

A bath (particularly an outdoor bath) with a view is a bonus. There is a great outdoor bath at an Airbnb at Mt Burrell, NSW, which has a good view of the mystical Wollumbin/Mt Warning ( at the heart of the  Tweed Valley).

A shower in a “love shack” in Great Western, Tasmania, was modern, lots of hot water, but the wall of the bathroom was an uninsulated sheet of iron – not exactly comfortable on a cold late-autumn evening.

While Fran will look for a bath, I will be looking for a fireplace. An outdoor firepit is good, for there is little to compare spending an evening in front of a flickering fire. Travelling in Europe in late autumn, we made sure everywhere we plan to stay will have some kind of heating system installed.

If we are travelling in Australia, in summer, the place should have air-conditioning.

BEDS: For the two of us, a Queen-sized bed is a must. King sized is ideal.

LIFT: If you are booking a place in a French city, check to see if there is a lift. It can be a nightmare lifting luggage up four flights of stairs.

SELF CHECK-IN: We are both borderline introverts so self-check-in work for us. We are happy to meet our hosts, but… you know. For this reason, we usually select the “Entire Place” option when looking for accommodation – we aren’t particularly sociable, especially in the morning.

FREE WIFI: Good internet coverage can be expected but not essential. Free, fast WiFi is a bonus. We stayed at Airbnb in Deepwater, NSW, where the only internet signal to be found was halfway up a hill at the back of the character-filled cottage.

Sometimes the host of the apartment will give complimentary food – breakfast, a bottle of wine, freshly baked break. Free items add to the appeal of a stay.

INDOOR TOILET: Having a bathroom/toilet that is inside the Airbnb stay is great, but not necessarily vital. At an off-the-grid property at Diggers Camp, NSW, the living quarters, the bedroom and the toilet were “adjoined” rather than together. You had to step out of the bedroom “pod”, into the night air to walk down a short passageway to the toilet. In the back yard of the stay was the remains of an old-style toilet, a dunny.

Besides an outdoor bath, the already mentioned Airbnb at Mt Burrell had a compost toilet located about 10 metres away from the backdoor house. The view from the dry toilet – looking out on a large tree was impressive.

REVIEWS: As a genral rule, most people are polite with Airbnb reviews. Few people want to leave a bad review. So you have to read between the lines.