Years ago, I read a novel about a large family in America.

Believe me, it was the first of many novels I was to read about families in America, but a few lines from this one stayed in my head.

Any time the family had to make a lengthy road trip, the father – who like many dads in U.S fiction was ex-military – made them all, despite their justifiable, deeply-felt and very vocal protests - rise at 3am so he could get on the road while they were clear.

I thought he was a lunatic and that they were unbelievably long-suffering. What was his problem, I wondered.

Alas, how life lurks in the long grass waiting to bite us on the butt.

It’s June, the overseas visitors are here. They’d like to see the famed Drombeg Stone Circle outside Rosscarbery or paddle in the waves at Inchydoney beach. They’re dying to take the cable-car to Dursey or see how accurately Bodkin portrayed Union Hall and Glandore.

And I say, yes; absolutely, but we need to be on the road straight after breakfast – that is, on or before 9.30am really.

I see them looking at me a bit askance.

Drombeg, for example, is only 40 minutes away from where we are.

But yet, like the ex-military dad, here was I, incomprehensibly, wanting to be on the road by first light for the stated reason that I want to travel while the traffic is light.

But this is West Cork, they say, their eyes shining.

Particularly if they’ve recently watched Bodkin.

“Ahhh, summertime in West Cork,” they breathe.

Ah, yes, of course; West Cork is so friendly and so full of charming, eccentric, time-rich locals and empty sylvan fuschia-fringed by-roads with no mad drivers.

There are no mad scum-bucket drivers around here. Of course.

I explain.

Drombeg Stone Circle, for example, is a very popular destination with visitors.

Its 17 standing stones, which date back to the Bronze Age, are located deep in the countryside on a........

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