So, what did you do on your holidays? It's one of those questions that stalks us throughout life - it starts on the first day of primary school, and follows us all the way to the watercooler, the hairdresser's salon, the taxi ride home. I would always give roughly the same answer: what I do on holiday, in the main, is plan where I'm going on holiday next. It has a brilliant circular simplicity to it, the kind of pleasing energy that makes the world go round.
And then I went and had two kids - Lily and Ned, now four and three - and the whole system unravelled. The globe, it seems, deflates like a popped balloon when you're laden with offspring. No more climbing Kilimanjaro before breakfast. No more jaunts to Kenya to walk with leopards. No more dodgy dhal in Kathmandu. And you can forget about mooching down Milan's via Spiga in search of a fabulous pair of Sergio Rossi sling-backs. Summer holidays with young children - and I know this from careful research and bitter experience - boil down to gung-ho camping, or two weeks on the Med in an extortionately expensive villa or fully serviced hotel, so priced because it lays claim to creche facilities and a shallow beach that's safe for paddling.
We've done it in Corsica. We've done it in Turkey. We've done it in Spain and the south of France. Last year, I was blowed if I was going to do it again. Would it, could it, be conceivable, affordable, to fly half way around the world in search of sun, sea, sand and something a bit more exotic than your average family-foray-to-France? Would Tobago be remotely possible?
The answer is a resounding yes, if you are prepared for an 11-hour journey (take lots of crayons and some ear plugs), a pounds 6,000 bill (take a little lie down) and a monster carbon footprint (off-set, off-set!). We went one better and took my parents - which not only added to the fun of it all, but also supplied us with a ready-made babysitting service and split the costs between four consenting adults. Brilliant.
And here's why. Shut your eyes and picture a tropical beach. Imagine, for a moment, the turquoise curve of bay, the wooden jetty with its coconut-palm roof, glass-bottomed boats bobbing for business, a dark stripe of ocean at the horizon, descending down the blue spectrum, through sapphire, cobalt, azure, diamond-clear, until it ends in a necklace of foam on the honey-coloured sand. Girls in rainbow bikinis dive into the surf. The greens and blues double, triple, their intensity in the sun until you feel dizzy just looking.
This is Pigeon Point in Tobago, a place so picture-book perfect that it might just be a dream. With its white powder sand backed by almond trees and coconut palms, it boasts the world's most photographed jetty, reaching out into the silver sea as if it's fishing for compliments. What you don't get from your idle imaginings, hatched while on the Tube to work or sitting on the ring road just outside Coventry, is the salty, quirky taste of the place. How, at Pigeon Point, you can buy sour-sop ice-cream by the weight from an ancient woman with grizzled fingers. How, at the rickety roadside tables beneath the sea-grape trees of Mount Irvine, you can haggle for a fistful of flying fish, wet from the sea, to fling on the barbecue that night. How, if there's a traffic jam here, it's because you're stuck behind a slow-moving truckload of watermelons. How your darling children go nutty and feral when they don't have to wear shoes and can befriend local bananaquits and parakeets over breakfast.
The appeal of Tobago to families is obvious: the beach, the beach and the beach. The choice on this little 41km-long island is pleasingly comprehensive, with a new cove or bay for every day, and then some to spare. Each beach has its own personality: Stonehaven, for instance, has black sand which sticks to the underside of your feet and ends up in the bath; Buccoo, with its crescents of moon-bright sand, is backed by spinach-green jungle; Englishman's Bay is ravishing and deserted. At Canoe Bay, Dorian the groundsman will shimmy up a palm tree to cut you a coconut and slice off its top for a TT$2.50 drink. Or you can meander through borders of bougainvillea towards the tumble-down bar, which sells second-hand books and rum punch to take your breath away. At Store Bay, another famous beach that might have been torn from the pages of a luxury travel brochure, hungry beach bums with sand between their toes can visit Miss Trim's, Miss Jean's, Esme's or Sylvia's - a series of candy-coloured cabins selling crab and dumplin' or curry goat, macaroni pie and sea-moss punch. We bought hot roti from Miss Trim's and sat under the gazebos to watch the world drift by.
And drift it does. Tobago is clearly a place to check your pace. There are no flume rides here, no discos, bingo or theme parks with rides that turn you upside down and empty your pockets of change. You won't find the trinket markets and smart bars and general fizz of a European beach resort. Within a few days, like it or not, you're cruising along slo-mo.
Visitors - particularly children (not to mention grandparents) - soon discover that it's the unfamiliar here that makes the trip worthwhile. It's shark bake for breakfast. It's bars called No Problem. Shops called Odds & Ends. Or the bus stop with its sign reminding sinners that "Effort and Faith Reap Rewards". It's the aloe vera man on Grafton beach, who smothers your pink limbs with jelly from the stalk's interior and then charges you an arm and a leg for the privilege. Drive around the island, and the weird and wonderful come knocking at your window. Gospel singing leaks from a bright-yellow church in Goodwood; outside, cattle doze in the dangerous shade of coconut palms. On the way to the Argyll falls, we strolled in the thickening heat past breadnut trees, banana palm and giant bamboo, arriving at a blissful tiered trio of pools where we swam - Lily, Ned, all of us - in the cool water, overseen by an antique Rasta sitting in the shade of his calabash stall.
Our trip was divided between the windward and leeward coasts of the island - a few miles from each other but seemingly worlds apart. In the driving rain (the guarantee of sunshine, we soon discovered, is not water-tight), the Atlantic coast of Tobago is a place of dark green, churning waters and chill winds. The sound of the waves here is constant, a Niagara of noise which gushes in when the patio doors are ajar. Our lavish, salty villa was part of a new-build resort called Tobago Plantations - flanked by a Hilton Hotel and an 18-hole golf course. Built on the flat coralline lowlands of the south, with its distant view of Scarborough twinkling like Christmas off to the left, the villa was certainly dramatic - complete with double-height cathedral ceilings and infinity pool. But we soon discovered that you can't swim in the sea - it's too rough - making it a grand folly of a residence in entirely the wrong place.
Better by far to stick to the Caribbean side, where all is suitably turquoise, placid, and tickled by an idle breeze. And, if you have money to cast on the wind, there are few places on the island more impressive than the villas at Stonehaven. This is the real deal: a series of elegant abodes clinging to a hillside overlooking great armfuls of ocean and designed by Arne Hasselqvist (the man who "did" Mustique for Bowie, Jagger and Princess Margaret). These days, Stevie Wonder stays here; Sting and Diddy were expected soon after we left. I like to think Diddy was woken from his four-poster slumber each morning by the same rufus-vented chachalaca which got us up every day. With luck, he'll have enjoyed the ministrations of Antonia, the villa's personal maid and cook, who is a dab hand at preparing shark bake and buljol (a savoury fry-up of salt fish, onions and tomato) and who litters your bed with hibiscus petals each evening. The children spent long hours in the private plunge pool, while we spent long hours on the 50ft veranda, reading fat books and communing with the resident geckos and emerald-throated hummingbirds.
The villas overlook the Grafton Caledonia bird sanctuary - founded by Eleanor Alefounder after the 1963 hurricane which decimated the island, wiping out most of its coconut, cocoa and banana plantations and reorienting the economy from agriculture to tourism. Forty years on, though Tobago remains largely unspoiled by its visitors, there are signs of change to come. These days, vast cruise ships like the Ocean Village dock at Scarborough and disgorge their cargo of the gormless lost on to its buzzy streets and alleyways. Snorkel the famed Buccoo reef and - besides the purple sea fans, the elkhorn and fire coral - there are great bald patches lost to thoughtless anchors and souvenir hunters. Some of the best dive sites have become cloudy with run-off from the Orinoco as it exits Venezuela just 10 miles off the coast.
In the event, I returned from Tobago not with trite brochure beach shots in my head - though you'll find them here at every turn. I came back instead with a bagful of whimsical, tangy memories: the guy who lay in his hammock on Mt Irvine beach at eight in the morning, playing his violin. Slow old men moving chequers at the speed of syrup in the shade of an almond tree. A sinister silver barracuda, suspended over lilac coral in the blood-warm sea. It's these treats to the senses that make the journey and the cost conceivable. Back home, I overheard my little girl telling her teacher that she'd "been to Bago" on her holidays and had drunk from a coconut with a straw. See? That's how it all starts.
A change of scene
Instead of a villa in Tuscany ... cruise along Turkey's Lycian coast. Exclusive Escapes is running family-friendly gulet cruises, departing May 26, between July 21 and Aug 18, and Oct 20. £750pp, including flights, all meals, soft drinks and excursions. 020-8605 3500, exclusiveescapes.co.uk.
Instead of an activity holiday on the Med ... give the kids a proper adventure - like camping in the Moroccan Sahara. They get to ride camels, race down sand dunes and sleep in a tented auberge. £779 (adults), £699 (children 5-12), inc flights, transfers, accommodation, most meals and a guide. The eight-day Sahara Sand Dune Adventure departs February 9 or 16. 0845 051 4567, familiesworldwide.co.uk.
Instead of CenterParcs ... live the good life with Feather Down Farm Days. OK so it was created by the man who brought CenterParcs to the UK, but Feather Down is totally different, offering rustic but comfortable tents with wooden floors, stoves and flush toilets on working farms. Following the opening at Manor Farm in Hampshire last September, five more are due this April in Somerset, Warwickshire, Wiltshire, Hereford/Worcestershire and Wales. Weekend rates from £196, 01420 80804, featherdown.co.uk.
Instead of a cottage in Devon ... try a wooden cabin at Deerpark in Liskeard, Cornwall. There are hiking and biking trails, and the Forestry Commission runs mushroom hunts and story-telling round the campfire at nearby Cardinham Woods. £299 for a week in May. 0845 130 8223, forest-holidays.com.
Way to go
Getting there
British Airways (0870 8509850, ba.com) flies Heathrow-Tobago via Antigua. Until January 23 seats are on sale from £432 return including taxes.
Where to stay
A&K Villas (0845 0700618, abercrombiekent.co.uk) offers a week's rental at Stonehaven Villas for £3,409 for a two-bedroom villa with pool. A week at Peninsula House costs from £1,925. Prices are for villa rental only and include transfers
Getting around
Classic Tours car hire: +639 9891.
Further information
0800 652 2158, visittnt.com.
Country code 00 868.
Flight time London-Tobago via Antigua:
11hrs. Time difference: +4hrs.
£1 = 12.10 TT dollars.