My holidays

KARL HENRY,personal trainer

What was your best holiday?

After college I travelled overland from Belgium to Thailand for four months with a friend. The rule was no planes allowed, except for a plane to Brussels and back from Bangkok. We decided to travel local class on the buses and trains (including a wooden bench on a 30-40 hour train journey in China) and to eat with the locals – both to get a feel of the place and also because we had little money (I borrowed €5,000 from the credit union for the trip).

We took the trans-Siberian railway to China, where we visited the very vibrant Beijing, and travelled to Vietnam, to the Killing Fields and Angkor Wat in Cambodia, before arriving in Thailand where we met up with friends.It was an exciting trip, a major challenge to see if it could be done.

What was your worst holiday?

Two years ago I went to Germany for the Iron Man Triathlon and ended up in the A&E department in Regensburg, Bavaria, with hyponatremia (from too much water in a warm climate) where my body stopped functioning. It certainly put a dampener on the trip!

If budget or work were not a restriction, what would be your dream holiday?

I’d love to do the journey Charlie Bird did on a big icebreaker ship to the North Pole. I love reading about polar explorers and imagine it would be a spectacular journey.

If you had your pick, who would you bring on holiday with you?

My girlfriend Jean, we’ve travelled a lot together.

Jean lives in Cork and I live in Dublin so we go away together every six to eight weeks, either in Ireland or abroad.

Roy Keane is a hero figure so I would love to meet him as I think he is intriguing. However I’m not sure if I would like to be stranded on a desert island with him.

What’s your favourite place in Ireland?

My favourite place for a break is Hilton Park in Co Monaghan. It looks like Downton Abbey, a spectacular big old country house that is hundreds of years old. It is run by as a guesthouse with six bedrooms and the cooking is spectacular. I love the architecture and staying there you feel you are giving money to preserving a house rather than just for profit. It is a Hidden Ireland house, I’ve stayed in lots of them.

Your recommended holiday reading?

Autobiography of a Yogiby Paramhansa Yogananda is very cool but is "out there". Steve Jobs' biography is a seriously good read. Another excellent book is boxer Bernard Dunne's autobiography.

Where will you go to next?

I hope to go to South Africa next. There’s also an old country house in Co Tipperary called the Old Convent that’s meant to be amazing.

* Personal trainer Karl Henry's book Real Results is published by Blackwater Press (€15). He is a fitness expert on RTÉ's Operation Transformation