I’M A holiday geek. I cherish food, wine and travel. My job is so intense and estranges me from my wife, Gael, for long periods. We set ourselves horizons by planning trips — it gets us through. We married this June, between filming, and grabbed five dreamy days in Rock, including a night in Steinville — Padstow — staying above his bistro. It was simple and unostentatious, with staff bordering on the effervescent.

We have a proper honeymoon organised for later this year. It’s going to annoy you: a road trip in Brazil, surfing along the north-facing coast, a few days in Rio and on to the Chilean wine regions near Santiago. Then it’s the Torres del Paine, in Patagonia, Christmas learning tango in Buenos Aires and two weeks’ hiking in Bolivia and Peru, before surfing in Ecuador and diving in the Galapagos. It sounds crazy, but I’ve worked virtually nonstop this year.

When we first went out, it was Gael who put distance between us by working in Australia.

I followed her out via Hawaii and broke the journey to surf at Waikiki. It was amazing. I’d just caught a good wave and was hanging around in the water when a turtle popped up next to my board. The sun was setting behind me, and a storm had created a pristine rainbow ahead. I was en route to Gael and, at that exact moment, life was perfect. Everything just shone.

We were falling in love, and I returned to Oz later that year for a west-coast road trip up to Broome, then north to long, white, empty beaches. We were in a dirt-cheap hired camper van, buying food at local shops and cooking among Aussies at camp sites. Some of them had taken two years out to circumnavigate Australia, self-educating their kids. It’s a great way to understand a country.

We had a breathtaking snorkel with whale sharks near Ningaloo Reef. There’s a spotter plane overhead and a guide in the water, who raises his arm to signal which way they’re moving. You’re bobbing around and suddenly, out of the blue, this enormous, mottled, prehistoric creature appears. It gets you really pumped up.

My family always travelled a lot when I was growing up. Mum and dad took us to the south of France and on winter ski trips, but my first vivid recollection — of smells and tastes, not sights — is of Istanbul. I remember mum weaned me onto calamari by telling me they were chewy chips. It worked, too.

But my most profound holiday memory is of Kruger National Park, in South Africa. I was 10 — the perfect time, between birth and puberty, to catch a boy’s interest — and woke at five every morning as if it were Christmas Day. We were staying at Olifants Camp, and I watched one of the biggest blood-red sunsets I’ve ever seen. There were lions, elephants, impala and wildebeest at the river, but none of them showed any interest in eating each other. They just drank.

It’s an image etched in my mind.

Mum is South African and, though the family left under apartheid, I’ve bought a house near the Knysna Heads. God, it’s wonderful. Gael and I learnt to surf nearby at Plettenberg Bay. There’s only one road, so follow the first board you see and you’ll end up at John and Sarah’s surf school.

I adore other parts of Africa too. I visited a friend doing VSO in northwest Ghana, where, despite crippling poverty, people exude an astonishing vitality and humanity. At a football match against a local school, I kept being given the local scrumpy. I was smashed, trying to defend against these amazing footballing kids.

I also travel closer to home — it’s so cheap getting around Europe now. I fly to Knock for golfing weekends with friends at the Carne course, near Belmullet, on Ireland’s west coast. As you drive north, there are fewer trees and more bog, then just as you think you are going nowhere, it opens onto the Atlantic.

In the best way, it’s like going back 50 years. Everyone greets you, lock-ins go on until 5am — you can’t leave at three — and at the Holmes pub, everyone joins in a dance, the Siege of Innis. It’s a scrum-down. You grab the opposite sex and fling them around as fast as possible. It’s hilarious. I love it.