Hitting the road with no reverse gear

SURVIVING THE SUMMER: At a loose end for a few days? Keen to provide the kids with something a little different to put into the September "How I spent my summer holidays" essay? Well I have a little suggestion for you. What about a short break in a horse-drawn caravan? You could do it in Co Galway, Co Mayo, Co Kerry - or even in Portlaoise.

What do you think? If you are part of a couple, I'll bet that while one of you is recoiling in pure horror at the notion, the other one is starting to smile a little, and saying out loud: "You know, I've always wanted to go on a horse-drawn caravan".

So why don't you? We did, a few years ago, and I can tell you, it was one of the best holidays ever.

A horse-drawn caravan is like a boat without half as much of the hassle. Children are murder on a boat. At one stage, years ago, we spent some time on a flat-roofed mini-barge on the river. We had two little girls and a baby in tow as we made our way slowly down the River Barrow. It was absolutely beautiful, but the girls didn't take long to discover a foolproof way of keeping our attention off the views and on them. They simply decided, every time they were on the roof, that they wanted to go into the cabin, and every time they were in the cabin, that they wanted to go on the roof. This happened literally every three minutes - for three days. And since they were not safe on the roof without life-jackets, and since they were too bulky in the cabin with life jackets, my three days were spent putting on, and taking off, life jackets. I am not joking.

The great thing about horse-drawn caravans is - no life-jackets. Of course, to make up for it, there is the little matter of the horse.

We arrived down to the farm, as arranged, the night before we were to set out. Everything was really nice. We slept in the caravan and had the use of the communal sitting room. The comment book was there, full of glowing testimonies. Everyone who had written in it seemed to have had the holiday of a lifetime. Reading through them however, it slowly became clear that many of them also seemed to have made an attachment of a life-time - to the horse.

Now I know this will sound silly, but it was only then that it dawned on me that the following morning we were going to be heading off, on our own, with five children and a strange animal - a big one.

We are not animal people. Neither of us grew up with pets. We have managed - I think twice - to keep a goldfish for a reasonable length of time. We once trapped a budgie which flew into our kitchen, and my husband occasionally boasts about his childhood pet rabbit. But dealing with a great big horse, on our own, suddenly made a boat look rather appealing, never mind the problem with life-jackets.

Luckily, it turned out that the owners were used to people like us. No messing, no hiding (I did try) - all adults were marshalled over to the stables first thing next morning for a serious lesson in how to manage both horse and carriage. There were some basic rules. Never leave the horse in harness if you are stopping - even for lunch. Be careful going down hills. Stop, if passing oncoming traffic looks like being a tight squeeze and one of the adults must always walk at the head of the horse.

And so off we went. And do you know what? It was absolutely wonderful. Walking through the midlands at a horse's pace - and I hate walking. But even when it was raining, it was pleasant and easygoing. In the evenings, we would make a pre-planned stop at a farmhouse and pitch our small tent for the overflow children. Sometimes other trekkers would be there, and sometimes we would be alone.

We fed ourselves and Jack (the horse), then next morning, out we would all go, sugar lumps in hand, to try to persuade him to allow himself to be put through another day of working for rank amateurs - which of course he did with unfailing good humour.

Only once did he get a little impatient, treading gently on the hubby's misplaced foot (sadly "gently" in the case of a rather large animal translated into serious damage to self-same foot), and only once too did we have what might be termed a serious AA Roadwatch-worthy incident.

Rounding a sharp bend on an impossibly narrow road, three-quarters of which we seemed to be filling, we came face to face with a massive truck, pulling an even bigger trailer. Horror. Crisis. What should we do? There was no way through, and anyway, we had been told on no account to move. Just stop, we had been told. Make it their problem.

So we did. That driver deserves a medal for the way he eventually manoeuvred his truck around us. I hope he realises we didn't mean to be rude or thick. We were just very stressed city folk. But I wonder what he said to his pals later about this shower who just stayed there rooted to the ground, refusing to budge, while the mad man with them came running at him roaring: "You go back. You go back. The horse can't reverse."

Caroline Murphy is a broadcaster and mother of six