Holiday Homes

(This is a bit long and definitely fits into the "musing" category!)

We’ve been lucky to enjoy staying in lots of different houses on holiday over the years. When the children came along it was a easier to rent a “home from home” for the space and the convenience of making up bottles of milk and heating up baby food.

Our first ever house was in Mallorca and Sophie was just 9 weeks old. We were introduced to villa holidays by my parents and apart from the odd hotel stay, we’ve always rented houses abroad. They’ve all been lovely in their own ways and some have been very comfortable while others have been extremely basic!

After the success of the villa in Mallorca, which had a lovely barbecue room next to the pool and a huge outside bathroom, we decided to rent a house in the Dordogne, again with my parents. We drove down in separate cars in pouring rain that continued for a week, more or less! The house was damp, chilly and dismal. We never used the pool which was sited in an area of the garden that never received the sun’s rays. I suppose the comments from the previous holidaymakers should have warned us about the weather and the useless pool! I hadn’t taken any warm clothes and I had to wrap Sophie up like a sausage when I put her to bed at night to keep her comfortable in the cold house. The lack of nearby toddler-tolerant restaurants and the constant rain sent us fleeing back home after just a week.

In September of the same year, Keith and I took off to Mallorca again for a week in a villa on our own, while mum and dad looked after Soph. We had a modern villa with a pool and it was a very self-indulgent week of eating and drinking. The only problem was the dogs in the vicinity who barked non-stop day and night. Dogs in Mallorca are mainly used for guarding houses and they were doing their job very well!

We returned to Mallorca the year afterwards to a lovely little resort called Cala San Vicente. The house we rented was beautiful but crumbling around the edges. Sophie was 2 and there were steep marble steps everywhere! We had to use tables and furniture to block off the worst of the steps and never took our eyes off her for a minute. Around the pool she wore a little life-jacket and, of course, it was ironic that the moment we took it off she fell into the pool. Luckily I was in the water at the time and was able to grab her when she bobbed back up and laughed in delight!

The following year I was pregnant with Mikey and we made the long drive down to Javea in Spain. I didn’t enjoy this holiday at all. I was anxious most of the time, convinced we were going to have an accident in the car, but at least the villa we rented was lovely and very spacious. It had a huge terrace overlooking the mountains but one night, in a storm, we left the sun canopy unfurled, and the wind caught it and broke it…

When Mikey came along, we missed a year but when he was 1 we went to France with some friends and rented two neighbouring gites. It was a disaster! It had been arranged that mum and dad would share one gite with the two other couples and they sorted out who would have each room before we all set off. Keith, me and the children would have the other gite, purely because of the mess and chaos that accompanied us!

However, when we arrived it turned out that mum and dad would not even have a shower room to themselves, while the other couple had their own en-suite bathrooms. My parents’ room had no wardrobe, no mirror and just a toilet and sink. While we waited (and waited!) for the other two couples to arrive, we made the decision to share one of the gites (mum and dad were used to our children) and leave the other gite for the two couples.

When they arrived there was a huge argument between all of us as the other couples thought we’d arranged things to suit ourselves as we‘d had to take the larger of the two gites, there being six of us! Needless to say, after the holiday, during which we barely saw them, we were no longer friends!

Our next villa was back in Mallorca, right out in the countryside. Our first night was nearly our last when Keith temporarily forgot he was abroad and nearly collided head on with an approaching car…we treated the road with a lot of respect after that! The villa was lovely with huge grounds and our own little family of chickens. Michael was three at the time and would follow them around all day, dressed in just a nappy. We would occasionally shout out his name and he would answer from a distant corner of the grounds, happy to wander about in pursuit of the hens who were probably traumatised by the experience! It was wonderful as the property was totally secure with large gates and fences all around and everything on one level.

Two years later we were back in Mallorca and renting privately this time. Mikey was 5, Sophie was 9 and we arrived at Palma airport in a huge storm. Our villa was just off the main road into Puerto Pollensa and had a very tight place to park our hire car. The owner met us and was showing us around, but Mikey couldn’t wait to get into the pool. He changed into his trunks, jumped in but realised he was out of his depth and started to panic. The owner, a little old lady of about 80, saw what was happening and jumped in fully clothed to rescue him. I knew he was OK as, very sensibly, he was making for the side of the pool but we thought the owner was going to have a heart attack. She emerged dripping and shaking and looking very pale indeed!

The pool area and gardens of this villa were lovely and we had an outside kitchen with a barbecue, worktops and huge table where we practically lived for two weeks. The inside was a different matter, though and was basic in the extreme. The second bedroom was on a mezzanine floor with extremely steep stairs leading up to it, so Keith slept up there with Sophie in twin beds, while I had Mikey with me in the “double” bed. I’m 5’7” but my feet would overhang the end of the bed! It was perhaps the most uncomfortable bed I’ve ever slept in!

The following year we wanted something a bit better so, again, we rented privately, but this time a bigger villa. Unfortunately, it was way out in the wilds, so every trip into Pollensa would take ages on a very narrow and bendy road. It certainly put a dampener on having a drink in the evening over dinner! The villa itself was OK, with a large main bedroom, and two smaller bedrooms. However, the pool was the size of a handkerchief and had rope fencing all around with a nasty drop to the gravelled driveway below. One day it simply collapsed into a heap and no matter how hard Keith tried, he couldn't repair it! Again, there were hard steps everywhere and one night I tripped on them and fell into the pool. My leg still hurts to this day! And no, I hadn’t been drinking!

The grounds were scruffy and hadn’t been maintained at all, which was unusual in Mallorca. Lots of villas are owned by local people who use the surrounding grounds to grow vegetables and fruit and keep livestock. Normally we have a cockerel and a donkey who are kept nearby and they seem to follow us wherever we go, along with the barking dog. The cockerel wakes us every morning and then the donkey and dog keep us company for the rest of the day, braying and barking in turn.

One afternoon, the barking dog seemed more insistent than normal so Keith went to investigate. He found a beautiful golden Labrador trapped by a length of chain and a wooden stake. He was overjoyed to be set free and for a couple of days became “our” dog. The children named him “Preventtic” which was on his collar, not realising it was a tic repellent collar, bless them! He was a lovely friendly dog who appreciated the titbits we brought back from our meals out, but the owner of the villa, who lived nearby, eventually returned him to his rightful master.

This last villa put us off renting privately so we returned to using villa companies where we would have a representative on hand should something go wrong. We stayed in the same gorgeous small villa for the next two years, enjoying the beautiful gardens and the goats who were kept in an adjoining field. We gave them all names and they would come to the fence every morning for titbits and to say hello. We also had two cats in this villa but thankfully no dog or donkey!

The approach to the villa was very hard to negotiate and every time we returned after going out, Keith would have to get out of the car to guide me around the very sharp bend. We even had a little roundabout in our driveway but no matter how hard we tried, we couldn’t just drive in and out. Sometimes it made for a bit of stress whenever we ventured out!

Rising car hire prices in Spain and the hassle in flying sent us to the Languedoc in France the following year in our own vehicle. The freedom was wonderful. The one mistake we made was to try and do the journey in one go. Keith drove down to Dover and then I took over in France and it took us 12 hours to get to our villa near Narbonne. Towards the end, when it wouldn’t have been worth stopping and having a nap, I felt as if I was floating due to the tiredness. Very dangerous and something I would never do again!

Our villa made up for the journey though and was one of the loveliest we’ve ever stayed in. We booked through a company, but the people who owned it also ran a hotel and restaurant nearby called Chez Pierrot. The restaurant was huge! On our first night we arrived to eat and couldn’t believe the amount of people queuing to get in! There were also bouncy castles everywhere so I felt very much at home! We think that the people were coming from the nearby campsites on the coast as the village we were in was only small, but had the classic French Boulangerie were we would buy our bread most mornings.

This year we took the decision to save our pennies for a trip to Florida next April. The children are no longer so easy to please and the lure of the pool is waning. Last year the children and me travelled to Orlando with my parents and rented a villa that was stunning in the way that American villas are. We had comfortable beds, comfortable sofas and every appliance you could think of.

I shall miss our rented house this year and the inevitable stress that accompanies it. It’s not the easiest of holidays, I’ll have to admit. It truly is a “home from home” in that we still have to cook, make beds, wash the dishes and clean up. I love the quirkiness, the way the houses are decorated in the owner's style (sometimes good, sometimes tacky!) and the total freedom and privacy that comes with a house of our own. I sometimes dream of a hotel, the breakfast buffet and the restaurant at night and maids coming in every day to clean and make the beds, but I wouldn’t swap for the world!