Health, Beauty and Lifestyle with Denise McNamara

With all sorts of warnings about the cost of flying going through the roof with this cap on the number of flights through Dublin Airport, booking the annual holiday may prove beyond the reach of many of us.

But what’s the alternative – staycations are also insane. I looked at booking one hotel last summer for four people and was quoted €1,500 for five days for a bloody three-star in a not-so-glamourous location.

Thanks be to the Lord I didn’t with the summer we had.

But there is one option that I have long toyed with but never quite made the leap – house swapping.

Ann Joyce from Renmore has been an avid house swapper for 25 years – and never more so than when she and husband John retired.

“We like to go on extended breaks, from October to Christmas. The first one we did was to Valencia and they’re like our Spanish family – we’ve been to their kids’ weddings, we go over at least twice a year,” she enthuses.

“Four years ago, a couple with a little girl who wanted to learn English came over for an academic year and they consider us as family. We feel Valencia is a second home, we know people in the neighbourhood, you get totally integrated into their way of life.”

Mary Dillon has been offering her eco-house between Kinvara and Kilcolgan up for exchange for 11 years. She had a yearning to go to San Francisco and knew she couldn’t afford to pay for a hotel so decided to sign up to the HomeExchange agency, the biggest in the world with 150,000 members across 145 countries.

The best exchange she and her family have had was a grand old house near Toulouse with a pool.

“If it was in Ireland it would be a museum. It was absolutely beautiful, the gardens, the pool was a bit hit with the kids,” recalls Mary.

Asked what was the worst one, she says they have never had a bad one.

“And I’m not just saying it because I’m speaking to you, but we’ve done all kinds of swaps, from a small apartment in Berlin, a mobile home in Cornwall – that could have been the worst if it had rained, but the sun shone for the whole time we were there.”

Ann says she had a poor experience with a property in Albania, where the photos did not match up and the host was unpleasant. But it was also the location for one of her best.

“We were in the south of Albania and the house was amazing which this huge big terrace over the ocean. We took a ferry over to Corfu and we also had an amazing old house with a huge roof terrace with this panoramic view of the sea.”

Getting ready for the first house swap can be a little daunting, but there’s no need to do a complete house overhaul, insists Mary.

“It’s just to leave it clean and tidy. We’d have a lot of clutter so we tend to put away stuff in the office and lock it. It makes me do a deep clean once a year before we go away for our two weeks in the summer.”

Ann says she doesn’t put away clothes – she clears a small space in a wardrobe or a drawer or two and has her house in Glenina Heights

Pictured: Mary Dillon pictured in Cornwall where they swapped their home for a mobile home on a beach.