We’re not experienced climbers, in our family. Okay, we’ve all been up Kilimanjaro, but that’s more a question of opportunity and determination, rather than skill. I didn’t know the difference between gaiters and garters until this week. We never have quite the right gear, but we’re all reasonably fit and enthusiastic, and the rare times we get together, we like to get out for a good hike.

And on this holiday, there was only one day when the five of us would be together without elderly relatives.

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‘Slieve Gullion,’ my husband said. In Armagh. Just beyond Newry; not far from here. Five hundred and seventy-three metres. They did a BBC programme about it the other day – the scenery is stunning. Let’s hope not too many other people got the same idea.’

I was relieved that although this is the highest hill in country Armagh, it’s a good bit lower than Slieve Binnian which we climbed a couple of weeks ago: my knee was still suffering a bit. The weather, needless to say, was awful. No-one in the right minds would venture out. ‘It can only get better,’ one daughter said, as she tied plastic bags around her feet before putting her skimpy trainers on. Have you noticed that canvas tennis shoes like the ones we had in the Sixties seem to have come back? That’s all our three twenty-something children seemed to have with them, despite all my text messages: ‘Remember to bring stuff for wet hikes.’

We made sandwiches, and there was a bit of resistance from one family member about whether we could use his flask for tomato soup. ‘It’ll stink for ever,’ he said. ‘But we have to have tomato soup! A family picnic wouldn’t be the same without tomato soup!’ Typically, no-one had plastic cups, so we wrapped the cottage mugs in kitchen roll. ‘No tomato in my sandwich!’ someone yelled. And I thought they’d grown out of fussy eating.

We reminisced about many past Irish picnics consumed inside hired cars in beautiful forest parks, looking out at the rain. ‘You used to bring our red Mothercare wellies and our blue raincoats, Mum. How on earth did you fit all that stuff into suitcases?’ How indeed. We had eleven holidays in North Antrim when the kids were small: then they rebelled and we tried France for a few years, before moving back to Donegal and more damp peat and wood in summer fires, freezing ocean dips, and drying of socks on radiators. But I’m not sure any holiday was as wet as this one. Or at least this week of this one. Yesterday we had a week’s worth of rain overnight.

When we reached Slieve Gullion, the rain had stopped. The kids (they will always be ‘the kids’) charged up the soggy purple mountainside (‘Leave the water in the car – it’s just a short climb – we don’t want to carry extra weight’), shoving each other into the heather, and catching up on gossip. ‘Over there is where Grandpa Boyd was born in 1888,’ my husband said, pointing to the plains below.

A quick aside about Grandpa Boyd. He was a fascinating person. The middle one of nine children, he was given away to cousins in North Armagh when he was five. We always thought that it was because the farm couldn’t support so many children, but it turns out that it was because the cousins’ family lost three of five children to diphtheria in a single week, and he was handed over to fill the gap. When he grew up he joined the Ministry, and went as a missionary to India in 1920. His bride-to-be travelled out to join him, chaperoned by her brother, the wedding was held at the Mission, and my mother-in-law was born in India. Grandpa Boyd went on to write many books about his time in India.

As with most mountains, what we thought was the peak of Slieve Gullion masked several higher ones. With our proper boots and hiking poles we parents were slightly better equipped than our progeny – or so I thought, until the rain started again, steady and horizontal. I was by this stage bringing up the rear, a long way behind everyone else. I fished into my pack for my K-Way – oops – the bundle I had thought was my K-way was in fact a hideous pair of plastic trousers I’d found somewhere – oh well, at least my bottom half might stay reasonably dry.

After an hour of climbing, one child came charging down towards me. ‘How sweet,’ I thought, ‘he’s going to give me a hand.’ ‘Bye mum, see you at the bottom – you only have ten minutes to go – not worth hanging around up there – it’s windy,’ and he disappeared down the slope. When I reached the top the other family members were shivering as they waited in solidarity for me. There was a mound of stones which marked the real summit, but I declined to climb them. ‘They’re artificial – someone put them there to make my life more difficult. This is the real top.’

And we started our downward journey: grateful for the plastic trousers, I found the ‘sit and slide down the heather’ method to be quite fun and efficient. Of course, just as I reached the car and the picnic table, where the others were pouring tomato soup and handing out sandwiches, the rain stopped. You could see for miles. ‘I win the dry sock competition!’ I called. ‘Hi Mum, that’s Armagh, so it is’ someone said. ‘Get it? Pun of the day. Armagh. Our Ma.’