The sun? What's that? I think we should be told. It hasn't been sighted for several months in this country. Armchair travellers have never been so eager to abandon their posts in front of the sunless box and get on that plane, with record numbers travelling out of Ireland for Christmas.
Most of the television networks now carry a range of travel programmes aimed at enticing as many potential travellers as possible into action. BBC is currently showing Great Railway Journeys, which follows Fergal Keane from Tokyo to Kagoshima next week; the long-running Holiday; and The Black Run, which attempts to discover the perfect skiing destination.
RTE is kicking off this month with its own new travel programmes, Across the Line and No Frontiers. The first programme in the eight-part series, Across the Line began on Tuesday. The series trails Waterford-born Leona Daly (21) and Welsh-born Lleucu Siencyn (23) 15,000 miles from Alaska to Argentina; a journey which took four months. The women were selected from more than 14,000 would-be participants.
"I'm going to go home and either be a celebrity or make an arse of myself," declares Daly in Juneau, Alaska, where we were told several times that men outnumber women by five to one. "The odds are good, but the goods are odd," they conclude, with happy irreverence.
Less amusing are comments about the Alaskan folk, such as "what are all these people with low I.Q. doing in the same place," and "they're all inbred and stupid here", which should have been edited out. Fly-on-the-wall documentary or not, some throwaway comments are best thrown away.
Still, it is refreshing to see the lack of intimidation shown by both women in the presence of the camera crew. Anyone who has ever stayed in a youth hostel will hoot at the scenes showing the daily ritual of chores - scrubbing toilets etc - being distributed by the deadly serious warden, and performed with varying degrees of enthusiasm by the hostellers.
With such a programme, the focus is as much on the characters of the travellers as it is on the places through which they are travelling. So far, we know that Siencyn has a boyfriend back in Wales, and that Daly thinks "I might get a snog but she won't - she's not allowed."
The end of the first programme sees them coming back from a night out at a transvestite club in San Francisco, swigging from illicit paper bags of booze on the street. "Mum, I'm really sorry about this," are Daly's parting words to the camera. Expect a tequila hangover next week in Mexico.
No Frontiers, meanwhile, is presented by a team of people rotating from week to week. The first programme is co-presented by Flo McSweeney in Mexico, Keith Doyle in Istanbul, and Christy Kenneally in Andalucia.
It's unfortunate that the programme begins with a dreadful piece from a Mexican resort, involving a horrific-looking hotel which overlooks a building site, and a cringe-making visit to a tourist market where a cartoon-like sombrero is purchased. This is the stuff of 1970s sitcoms, where all travellers in foreign places are assumed to be eejits.
Better by far is the piece from Istanbul by Keith Doyle. He starts off with an almighty clanger though, describing the Bosporus Sea as "a river", but goes on to capture something of the sense of the city that straddles Asia. Doyle interviews some sussed young travellers in the cafes, whose pertinent advice and comments about Istanbul, combined with a good range of scenic locations, make for an interesting snapshot of the city.
Oh, but why do they opt for such a lazy cliched ending, with a mortified-looking Doyle getting the obligatory schmaltzy treatment in a bar from a belly dancer?
Christy Kenneally presents an atmospheric piece from Andalucia, including Seville, but frustratingly, it is cut in two, with the second part to be shown the following week. No Frontiers doesn't seem able to decide exactly what sort of travel programme it is - snappy introductions to locations or meandering reveries which we see a bit of this week and a bit the next.
At the end of every piece, lots of bumf comes up on screen from certain travel agents, listing their prices and destinations. It's useful and practical information, but it also makes No Frontiers look like one big ad.
Across the Line, Network 2, Tuesdays, 9.50 p.m.-10.20 p.m. No Frontiers, Thursdays, 8.30 p.m.9 p.m. on RTE 1