The vegans have landed in West Cork

After a day’s house-hunting in West Cork, I texted the builder boyfriend to say that we were too late. The vegans had landed.

This was my second trip to view farms in Ireland and I fell even more in love with the rugged, sometimes desolate landscape punctuated by friendly market towns with bunting strung across the streets. Unfortunately, so had everyone else.

Two agents had confirmed that my nearest neighbours might be a pair of unwashed British hobbit people

The London lefties have made it to the Emerald Isle. Having laid waste to Devon, Cornwall and Wales with their llamas and yurts and mental ideas about everything rural from farming to hunting, the liberal elite have set sail for the west coast of Ireland, or rather they have got on a Ryanair flight. It’s one hour from London to Cork.

Whereas it’s a seven-hour drive to Wales and the Welsh Assembly has quite rightly brought in a savage second home tax to make sure the Islington lefties sell up and leave. Devon and Cornwall seem to be battling it out more philosophically, by refusing to serve second-homers in shops, or being rude to them, that sort of thing. I wish them luck.

Of course, neither I nor anyone should ever write about house-hunting in Ireland. We will all of us bear some responsibility when the first sabs start throwing themselves in front of horses at the Irish derby.

I was sitting in my car outside a long, white farmhouse, donkey in the front paddock, gypsy caravan out back, when a friend texted me the link: ‘Why Brits are ditching Cornwall for the west coast of Ireland.’

I looked out over the herds of cows for beef and dairy grazing in fields sweeping impossibly green towards the brown and purple mountains, the wind whistling, the chickens squawking, the sun peaking momentarily through moody grey clouds and I thought: ‘No! No no no no no!’

It was like a nightmare.