We have lived in Somerset in the same house for more than 45 years now. It is our home, and closing its front door behind me is like pulling a comforting shawl about my shoulders, warm and protected. But there are two other places in the world that have special meaning for me and my family. We visit both of them on a regular basis and always look forward to being back there. One is Antigua in the West Indies. We found this little corner of paradise some years ago when we needed a break after my husband went through a particularly difficult time at work. Staying in a hotel all of 20 yards from the beach was idyllic; blue sky, beautiful golden sand and a warm sea was exactly the respite we needed. We have returned every year since, though no longer to that hotel. Now we have an apartment in a condominium half a mile further down the beach, which captivated us all those years ago. Set in tropical gardens the bougainvillea is brilliant, with hot, clashing colours, bright orange and shocking pink next to mauve and white and yellow. Red hibiscus offer a daily flower and the palm trees tower above, giving welcome shade if you brave the risk of a coconut on your head. The roads are dry and dusty, the roadside bushes dustier still. I love the island, but it is a hot landscape.

Antigua is beautiful, but it has a rival, somewhere entirely different. My husband is Irish, and many years ago, on holiday with three preschool children, we scraped together enough money to buy a cottage just outside a fishing village in West Cork. Every year since, we have crossed the Irish Sea for a month or two of respite and relaxation with our children – and now our grandchildren.

To both places I take my computer and continue with my current writing. Though the setting of my latest book, The French Wife, is 19th-century France, it was written in both Antigua and Ireland. Once I am actually writing it doesn’t matter where I am: I am within my book. The important thing is to keep working wherever I am, otherwise I might simply slip into lotus-eating mode and write nothing at all. In Antigua keeping up with my writing is easier. It’s too hot to lie out in the sun all day, and though I like to be warm I am not a sun worshipper. It’s too hot to walk far except in the early morning or the short evening twilight. That means plenty of time to read – essential to my mental health – and to write – a compulsive imperative. The sea is warm, happy hour in any of the beach bars is happy but …

In Ireland writing is more difficult. Rain or shine I want to be out enjoying the stunning countryside with which I’m surrounded. I want to catch mackerel for the barbecue or to smoke and make into paté; I want to be digging sand castles with moats to stop the incoming tide; I want to stomp through the woods looking for fairy houses; I want to sit peacefully on the patio in the evening sun, gazing out to sea, with a glass of wine in my hand, or to join friends in the beer garden of the local pub for “a nice clean drink” – a G&T.

I watch my children doing all the things they did themselves as kids, and I’m delighted that they want to recreate their own childhood fun. Clambering over rocks to peer into secret pools, watching for seals, toasting marshmallows over a campfire on the beach.

When someone asks me which place I’d prefer if I had to choose, most people assume that I would choose exotic, warm Antigua, land of sea and sun, not Ireland where the weather, even in the summer, is unpredictable, and the sea – described by intrepid swimmers as “bracing” – is freezing cold. But they are wrong. I love both places for different reasons, but there is no contest. If one had to go it would be Antigua. Hot sun and hot colours have to give way to the cool green landscape of West Cork, with its craggy headlands and wide sandy beaches.

“Antigua,” I tell them, “is balm to the body. West Cork in Ireland is balm to the soul.”

The French Wife, Diney Costeloe, Head of Zeus, €23, is out now.