Love, Nina

North London crescent

A friend of mine regularly sees Alan Bennett from her office in Camden and in moments of boredom texts me his movements. "He just nearly got run over - again", she sighs, virtually.

Alan Bennett also features in Nick Hornby's delightful adaptation of the memoirs of North London nanny, Nina Stibbe. (The memoirs were originally letters Nina wrote to her sister.) For television, names have been changed. But in reality the fussy Scottish poet Malcolm Tanner, who turns up to have his dinner cooked for him most nights and then complains about what he is served, was Alan Bennett. The mother of Nina's wards was Mary Kay Wilmers, the editor of The London Review of Books, and their father the film maker Stephen Frears. And Ray, the man in the wheelchair that Nina's boyfriend Nunney cares for, was the son (Tom) of biographer Claire Tomalin, by then married to playwright Michael Frayn. As a link to the past, Nina Stibbe's real ward Sam Frears (Joe in the series) plays Ray. It's what Joe's Riley-Day syndrome looks like 35 years on from our 1982 setting, where he has regular and alarming bouts of extreme ill health.

All this may be rather confusing. But suffice to say, Gloucester Crescent, Camden (or Primrose Hill in postcode snobbery) is the hub of the London literati. It's Lady In The Van territory, but here seen through the eyes of a 20 year old girl from Leicester who has no idea who any of them are. (She thought she recognised Malcolm from Coronation Street.) Instead of being in awe of them she is entirely at ease, and tactless in her opinions. Nina's neuroses are instead to do with whether Nunney likes her, how not to giggle in her yoga classes, how much turkey mince to buy, how to rehome the cat, how to upgrade a bin, how to redial quickly on an old-school Bakelite phone, how to clean genitals off a pavement, and how to keep the exuberant, football loving boys safely occupied in a skip. (The boys' derision of Leicester City is of course rather ironic in 2016.) I am not sure of Nina's previous child care experience. She walks barefoot through the streets of North London, which not many would advise. Maybe it's to prepare for the boy's much feared nuclear war, or maybe the pavements were cleaner in 1982. The property prices were certainly lower. Nowadays a nanny in a similar location would have to serve spoilt bankers, Russian oligarchs or Arab sheikhs, rather than the creative core of our cultural heritage.

How to redial quickly on a phone like this?

Helena Bonham-Carter as mother George is brilliant - gruff, whimsical, rude, encouraging, dismissive, affectionate, emotionless but (deep down) extremely caring. The boys are delightful, Nina suitably kooky and cross, but Malcolm isn't quite Alan Bennetty enough for me, if Bennetty can be a word in NW1.

Some of this literary circle obviously rubbed off, as Nina, after a confused and cautious introduction to Thomas Hardy by the more erudite Nunney, eventually goes off to study English. And write a book or two.

North London is one of my spiritual homes. Alan Bennett or Michael Frayn are the neighbours of my dreams. Admittedly, my actual next-door neighbours in North London were a loud Brazilian family, ten Middle Eastern blokes crammed into a one-bedroom flat and an elderly man with behaviour issues who used to stand at his window in his pants, watching me on our roof terrace. But this was Crouch End, not Primrose Hill.

Not that I would cook dinner for Alan Bennett if he was that picky. Maybe that's why people keep trying to run him over - they served him tinned tomatoes in his Hunters stew and couldn't hack the criticism.

Aviary, London Zoo from the Camden Canal

Primrose Hill - those beautiful views over the zoo and the City of London, and the Greek restaurant Limonia, where we shared many wonderful meals with our dear friend Tony, who died recently.  The charming cafes tumble down to the markets and canals of grittier Camden Lock. But up on the hill, the space is light and airy. It's its own special world.

Of course Nina and Nunney, once married, settled in Crouch End. Just like all the good people. And most of the cast of EastEnders.

Child Friendly Holiday Review: Eurocamp at Camping Les Fontaines, Lathuile, near Annecy, France

We were slightly nervous about our half-term trip to France. Firstly, our amazing time at Bella Italia in Lake Garda was going to be a hard act to follow. Secondly, France was on strike. For the week prior to our trip the news was full of footage of cars queuing at empty petrol pumps, piles of burning tyres blockading ports and oil refineries, and police tear-gassing crowds of angry workers.

We tried not to worry. After all, we were flying to Geneva, which meant we could possibly skirt around French air space and its striking air traffic controllers. And the ever organised Swiss would surely have sorted themselves some petrol. And we'd be unlikely to need more than a tank for a week as we were staying only an hour's drive from the airport.

But then we read this article telling us that as of May 1st, it had become illegal for EU nationals to drive a non-EU registered car into the EU. In other words, British people are no longer allowed to drive a Swiss hire car into France. Luckily, when we rang the hire car desk at Geneva airport to tell them our plans they assured us that they could give us a car with German number plates and all would be well. And it was. Frankly, this new law must be affecting pretty much anybody renting a car in Geneva since it's almost entirely surrounded by France. As for the rest of the unrest, we saw only a couple of petrol pumps without fuel in the whole week. And no riots or demonstrations. Life seemed to be continuing as normal despite what had been in the press. We did have a power cut in the middle of our final night, but it was limited to the campsite.

We chose to go to Annecy simply because in the whole of the French-speaking world, Geneva was the only place we could find affordable flights to during May half-term. We paid £278 total for the three of us travelling with EasyJet from Manchester. I knew that good weather in the Alps couldn't be guaranteed, but I also recalled visiting Annecy with my family 30 years ago, and spending the whole time in boiling sunshine. Surely whatever happened, it couldn't rain every single day?

Well, yes, it could, unfortunately.

At the start of the week, the forecast was grim for the first couple of days, but improving from then on. But every morning, the forecast would change, and the magical moment of the skies finally brightening would be shifted on another 24 hours. In the meantime, the rain continued to fall, steadily and miserably. It hammered on our roof all night, keeping us awake. It turned the grass in front of our caravan to mud. It meant we were trying to entertain a five-year-old who was desperate to go out and make friends with other children all stuck indoors. It meant we couldn't dry our clothes or air our towels. And with only a blanket to sleep under and a single temperamental gas heater to warm the caravan, it was very chilly at night.

It's only seeing the news footage from Central France and Paris since we've been home that we've realised we got off lightly. There were no floods in our corner of France, and for that we must be grateful. Living in York, we endured a winter under water, and our city is still trying to recover from the aftermath of the Boxing Day storms.

All week, we had hopes for Friday. Friday was when the sun would come, said everybody. But Friday morning dawned just as damp and misty as the rest of them. We slumped into our chairs, defeated. How on earth could we fill yet another day of this? But mid-afternoon, there was a welcome break in the clouds and we headed down to the beach at Doussard. And by bedtime, we saw the Alps above our caravan at last! Just in time to go home early the next morning.

Sunny Doussard beach!

Looking towards Les Fontaines from Doussard beach

The snow-topped Alps appear at last above our caravan!

Mille feuille and religieuse from the bakery in Duingt

There was nothing we could do about the weather, so we tried to make the best of it. The good news is that in France, even when it is raining, the food and wine still taste delicious. We sat on our decking under the Eurocamp umbrella sharing a bottle of Haute-Savoie Apremont while the rain cascaded around us. And we did manage to see some of the local area between the showers. We didn't think it wasn't worth going on longer drives to places like Chambery or Chamonix in case we got there to find the mountains hidden by raincloud, especially as our five year old hasn't outgrown the "Are we there yet?" phase. But there are plenty of towns dotted round the lake which are worth a visit, Annecy especially. The Tuesday market was in full swing when we arrived, and it was wonderful to sample the vast array of cheese and olives, to smell the mounds of macarons and fresh herbs, and see the stalls laden only with local rather than imported produce - asparagus, artichokes, turnips, tomatoes. We also enjoyed Talloires, a small village of exclusive hotels and restaurants with eye-watering prices. How the wealthy spend their holidays on Lake Annecy.

Annecy

Talloires

The beaches around the lake were deserted. It wasn't yet summer season, but nobody else would have been foolish enough to visit them in our weather. Some beaches charge entry in July and August - how gorgeous they must be with the sun beaming down on them, with people leaping off the diving boards into the water and tanning themselves on the grassy lawns. We blew bubbles from the boardwalks and watched the paragliders spinning in the air above us. The paragliders, at least, come out in most weathers.

View towards Duingt from Talloires beach

Bubbles

Parapente

We also spent half a day in Albertville, which hosted the Winter Olympics in 1992. There is a museum about this, apparently, but we failed to find it. We did enjoy some delicious crepes and sorbets while looking though. We also enjoyed the bunting strung across the streets ready for a stage of the Tour de France to pass through in July. It reminded us of York's great day hosting the Tour de France a couple of years ago, when the caravane and the cyclists came right past the end of our road. The little medieval village of Conflans up a hill above Albertville is also worth a visit. All the shops and restaurants were closed on the day we visited, but the houses and views were still lovely. I wanted us to visit the butterfly museum at Faverges on the way back to Lathuile, which an Annecy website had assured me would be open on Wednesday afternoons, but it turns out it was Wednesday afternoons by appointment only; an appointment which we did not have.

Conflans

View of Conflans from Albertville, with Tour de France bunting

Albertville and jersey bunting

The closed butterfly museum and chateau at Faverges

We grew very fond of Les Fontaines. It is a small and rustic campsite, run by a friendly family who plainly love what they do. They are always out and about working on the pitches or paths, clearing drains, tearing around on golf buggies. The campsite is on a hill, but you can't actually see the lake, even though it's only about 500 metres away. Some mobile homes have better views than others, and the Eurocamp tents have the best of all, overlooking meadows and mountains.

View from the Eurocamp tents

Main terrace of Eurocamp caravans

We had booked an Esprit, which was never going to compare to the Avant we had rented in Italy. It was clean, but also quite dark and cold, and didn't have as much storage as other models we have stayed in. I possibly only noticed these things because of the longer periods of time I was forced to spend inside, rather than living mostly outdoors as on previous Eurocamp trips. The caravan was dark because it was under a tree, which may provide welcome shade if you were there in a hot spell. (It's so hard to imagine this!) The Esprit did have English plugs, which saved messing around with Continental adaptors. I think this site could benefit from duvet hire, as it really was hard to keep warm at night. We hadn't been able to bring bedding as we had flown over, though we had packed hot water bottles and thermals. However, the couriers brought us extra blankets on request, and this helped enormously.

Our Esprit caravan

The site has two pool complexes, only one of which was really in use. This one had a section with a retractable roof, which meant we could still use the pool even on a rainy day. The water was too cold for our daughter though - it is technically heated, but as it circulates to the outside, it never truly warms up. The icy jacuzzi was also not what you would call relaxing. On the last day when the sun briefly appeared in the afternoon, I went for a quick swim in the outside part of the pool, and the setting was amazing.

The main pool (covered area to the right)

Water slides (not really in use while we were there)

There is a small play area, a sports pitch, two table tennis tables and a large bouncy pillow, which was a big highlight for the kids when it was dry. Some adult supervision of children on the pillow (or at least a bit of caution) is required - two boisterous boys managed to badly hurt their sister's arm with some overly enthusiastic jumping while we were there. You could borrow boules, racquets, table tennis bats and board games from the Eurocamp couriers, which were all much appreciated.

Pillow!

Campsite cows

Resident campsite dog

The campsite had a small shop, which had just closed when we first arrived just before seven on a Sunday evening, but the owner very kindly opened up again for us so we could buy a few essentials and order bread for the next morning. Fresh baguettes, croissants and pain au chocolats were delivered every day, but had to be reserved in advance. For a more extensive food shop, there is a large Intermarche supermarket on the road to Faverges, about 15 minutes' drive away, and there is a Lidl opposite that. Doussard, the nearest village to the campsite, has a smaller but well-stocked Carrefour.

We ate in the campsite restaurant on the first evening - the food was hearty and rustic, and kept us out of the deluge which had just started and then wouldn't stop for 24 hours. I enjoyed my tartiflette very much, and they made a good pizza for our daughter. The restaurant was open every day for lunch and dinner, which is great, as there isn't anywhere else to eat in the immediate vicinity of the campsite (apart from another campsite). We walked down to the restaurant Chez Ma Cousine on the lake shore for lunch one day. Very good food here, but apart from the menu du jour at 19 Euros for three courses, it was expensive. It had its own private beach and offered a valet parking service in its tiny car park, which being on foot we didn't require.

Chez Ma Cousine

Even in the rain, it's a beautiful part of the world. I hope we have better luck with the weather if we go again, and that the situation in France calms before the big summer holiday. Thankfully, air traffic control called off their strike scheduled for the weekend we were due to fly home, so our journey back was without issue.

Paul Merton's Secret Stations

I don't know why I have this pull towards programmes about trains. My railway obsessed brother would argue that it's genetic.

But this isn't Michael Portillo's Grand Tour style Continental journeys, staying in sumptuous imperialistic hotels, riding high-speed express trains wearing ridiculous fluorescent jackets. Instead here is Paul Merton in a flat cap and tweeds, visiting youth hostels and stations in such remote corners of the country that you have to stick your thumb out to stop the train. Once aboard you have to tell the guard where you plan to get off, otherwise the train will trundle straight through. For these are station request stops. There are apparently 152 of them in the UK.

Merton travels from Devon to Wales to Cumbria and Scotland on amusingly named lines (Looe Valley, Kyle) to amusingly named places (Luxulyan, Pontarddulais, Drigg, St Keyne Wishing Well Halt). A lot of the trains are no bigger than buses, but the last is the night sleeper to Fort William from London Euston, which deposits Merton in the middle of a vast isolated moor on the Scottish estate of Corrour.

Merton visits nuclear waste facilities, supermarket depots, espionage schools, wedding dress shops and china clay mines. He cheats at a spot of fell running. He walks through doors that lead nowhere. He overpays for a churn of Devon Ambrosia cream. He joins a male voice choir. He visits a station (Reddish South) which has only one train a week, running in only one direction. The service keeps going because it would be more expensive to petition Parliament to abolish it, but it has three loyal passengers, and three loyal trainspotters who wait to see them get off at Denton and get the bus home.

Paul Merton is always Paul Merton - jovial, witty, surreal, prepared to wear a funny outfit and point out the ridiculousness of life without being rude. It was a peaceful, enjoyable watch for a Sunday night, even if I was watching it about 30 years before my time.

Arisaig

West Highland Line going over the Glenfinnan Viaduct

We once spent a week in Scotland overlooking the West Highland Line to Mallaig. We stopped briefly at Arisaig, where Paul Merton tells us that the Special Operations Executive trained spies in the Second World War. I've also spent a beautiful week in Pembrokeshire, where Merton learns to operated a signalbox and meets the man (Dixe Wills) whose book Tiny Stations inspired the series. I've visited Devon and Cornwall many times. I've also spent a day exploring the bleak West Cumbrian coast, dominated by Sellafield and nuclear risk.

Aberfelin, Pembrokeshire

But I don't think I have ever had the pleasure of visiting a request stop station. Something to save for my retirement perhaps, assuming any of them are still open by then. Reddish South possibly.

Child Friendly Holiday Review: Eurocamp at Bella Italia, Peschiera del Garda, Italy

Lake Garda from Peschiera

I am normally cynical about the adoption of American traditions over here. What's wrong with a turnip and a bit of apple bobbing at Halloween, for example? Who wants a truckload of Coca Cola for Christmas? Oh, sorry, I mean the Holidays? So the same applies to Black Friday. Thanksgiving isn't a thing over here, for obvious reasons, so why should we indulge in the retail frenzy that follows it? Apart from maybe getting some Christmas presents ahead of the game, it just seems an excuse for a fight over a flat screen TV in Tesco's.

Since we aren't actually on holiday, unlike our cousins in the US, Black Friday makes us feel a little resentful. And start thinking about holidays. And booking them. Cos it's November, and cold, and wet and you've finished the parkin from Bonfire Night and you don't want to eat a mince pie before December. Which I is how I ended up becoming a Black Friday victim last year. The Guardian travel webpage told me that Eurocamp were selling all their Easter to May holidays off at half price for the duration of the Black Friday weekend.

As we are now tied to going away in school holidays for the next 12 years or so, that was a bargain impossible to resist. After also scoring some miraculously affordable Easyjet flights from Gatwick, I booked us six nights at the Bella Italia campsite in Peschiera del Garda for a very reasonable £210. It was only after I had hit the "Book Now" button that I realised that the middle weekend of the school holidays (when I had booked for) wasn't actually Easter in 2016. Easter weekend was the day after schools finished at the end of March. So there was some grovelling to my husband, who had to book two extra days' leave from work immediately after a long weekend away from the office. But thankfully nobody objected and he was granted the time off.

We then had to get ourselves from York to Gatwick Airport without breaking the bank, but I managed to get train tickets the day they went on sale three months in advance, and with our Family Railcard discount, we got all three of us to Gatwick for 80 pounds return, which is less than petrol and parking would have been, and much less hassle. We would have had to stay the night at the airport either way - even though our flights weren't at anti-social times, getting to and from York in the same day would not have been possible without a very very early start and a very very late night home, things which are just not that easy to deal with when travelling with a five year old. So the fabulous Premier Inn at the North Terminal did its job - £39 for a clean and comfortable room, £50 for dinner and breakfast for three, and one little girl entertained for hours sitting on a windowsill watching planes take off and the Skytrain monorail trundling between the Terminals.

Premier Inn delights - plane spotting

Car park and Skytrain views

I also hadn't known that a general strike was planned in France for the day of our outbound travel, which meant French air traffic control workers were off too. We were really lucky because our flight was relatively unaffected - the pilot was routed over Germany and Switzerland, and we were only about 15 minutes late taking off. Unfortunately we spent those 15 minutes standing on a cramped gangway between the departure lounge and the plane because the Easyjet crew (not to be confused with Rastamouse) decided to start boarding before the aircraft was ready. The delay was actually due to the stewards being tardy for their shift. They also had to give the aircraft an extra clean as there was a passenger with a severe nut allergy on the flight. But Gatwick was a stressful place to be that morning, as numerous flights to France and Spain were cancelled or severely delayed.

We chose Bella Italia as we had been to Peschiera del Garda before, staying at Camping Butterfly, a small site the other side of town. Bella Italia is the only site open so early in the season, but like Butterfly it is in walking distance of the town centre, which then gives access to trains, boats and buses and relieves you from the necessity (and expense) of hiring a car. We booked a taxi transfer online through Peschiera Transfer, which did what it said on the tin - picked us up at Verona airport, provided a booster seat for our daughter, and delivered us to the campsite (and back again) for 108 Euros return. We were at Bella Italia in time for tea, and the sun was shining. Coming from a city that had spent most of winter under water, it was a welcome sight.

First views of the lake

Because we had paid half-price, we had splashed out on the superior model of caravan for our stay. The Eurocamp Avants were only a year old, and still had that "new car" smell about them. They were much larger than any mobile home we have previously stayed in with Eurocamp, and really were very nice and comfortable, with a king size bed and a leather settee. They even had a dishwasher. Although we were asked not to use the dishwasher at the same time as the air conditioning, as this would trip the power supply, which hadn't been upgraded in line with the caravan. The weather was so pleasant that we really were only inside the caravan to sleep, so all this luxury was a little wasted on us. There was a big deck outside to lounge about on, even if the couriers had been lax about cleaning off the bird poo splattered on the furniture. The big deck also meant that there is now much less space for parking cars next to the Avants - indeed on some pitches it would be impossible. Not an issue for us, as we were pedestrians, but it's something to bear in mind.

The Avant

Free cat with every caravan

The couriers were the typical bunch of jobbing students that you get on most Eurocamp sites. We had been exceptionally lucky with our courier in Holland the past two years. He was doing it for a career rather than a season, and made a huge effort to provide excellent customer service and a lot of information to his guests. The couriers in Italy had only just arrived and were only really there to service the units - I wouldn't have trusted some of them to fix anything that broke or to recommend much about the area. As we had been before (and I have a friend who lives locally) we didn't need any tips - in fact, the couriers were asking us for advice. But they were always polite, if a bit clueless.

The campsite is huge - by the far the biggest we have thus far stayed on. I imagine in the height of summer it could get unbearable - with heat, dust, crowds, noise and mosquitoes. But in early April, it was ideal, as all the facilities (apart from some of the pools) were open for business, but there was no pressure on space. There were always sunloungers free by the pools, and tables in the restaurants. There was a decent supermarket on site, which was more expensive but not exorbitant, and because we hadn't paid to hire a car, we accepted its premium without complaint. 

Turning blue

The pools were freezing, but this didn't stop our daughter from wanting to swim every day. I had to hoik her out when her skin turned the same colour as the water, but she seemed to suffer no ill effects from these mild doses of hypothermia. There were a few play areas dotted around the campsite, some of which charged a small entrance fee - eg for trampolines, water dodgems or inflatables. Some were only open late afternoon/ early evening.

There are at least three restaurants on the campsite, plus bars and a gelateria. We ate several times at the restaurant overlooking the lake. It was fairly reasonable for a plate of pizza or pasta, and the waiters got to know us during the week so were always friendly. There was always a table on the terrace available - in the summer, you would no doubt have to book in advance. The restaurant also allowed us a spot of terrible parenting as it had a kiddies corner with TV, which meant that our daughter could happily watch Frozen or Brave or How To Train Your Dragon while we sat and drank wine and had a conversation while we waited for our food. This was a real and rare treat - date nights are few and far between for us in York.

Quality time, quality wine

The kids club (free of charge, run by the campsite) also gave us a couple of hours to ourselves most days. Our daughter was really keen to go so she could meet other kids (the issue of having an only child) and show some independence. Ofsted may have had a field day with the sessions, given that they took no child's info or any contact details for parents, but the animatori were very sweet and we knew we could trust our daughter to stick around until we went to collect her. The same couldn't be said for some of the younger boys, who tended to bolt off without anyone noticing. The kids did face painting and craft activities, played games, and one day made costumes and practised for a fashion show, which we then had to stay up late after the evening mini disco to watch. The mini disco was hilarious after a few glasses of Lugana - I still have the songs spinning round my head. "Il cielo e azzuro e l'energia di un estate da ricordare...Tanz mit mir, dance with me, Be-e-e-e-e-ella Italia, Bella, bella, Italia..." Click on the link and you won't thank me. Europop at its finest.

Catwalk Binbag Chic

Princess Fairy Crafting

We were deliberately lazy on this visit, having been to Peschiera before, at a time when our daughter was still in a pushchair so could be strapped in and made to go places without an argument. This time it was harder to persuade her of the merits of Bardolino (the place, not the wine) over a campsite bouncy castle. But go to Bardolino we did. (By bribing her with the promise of the campsite bouncy castle when we got back.) Otherwise we just pottered about on the campsite (counting lizards) or on the beach by the lake (counting fish), and went into Peschiera a couple of times.

Bardolino

Peschiera Walls

However, if you have time and children with inclination, below are the local must-sees:

Easier with a threenager?

1) Any of the lakeside towns. Peschiera is pleasant, but it's worth taking a boat trip to at least one other - we have been to Desenzano, Lazise, Sirmione and Bardolino. They are all a bit samey, but equally charming. There is always a promenade to stroll along, then a cafe by the promenade from where you can watch people strolling along. The lake is often really hazy, so you can't see very far across the water. Each town usually has a small castle, a harbour, a pebbly beach and a decent play park. Bardolino and Peschiera have landtrains to give you a quick child-friendly tour. Without a car it's harder to get to the towns further afield like Limone and Malcesine - the boat trips to get to them are long, and the (quicker) coach services only run from June. Annoyingly, on the return leg of our day trip to Bardolino, the ticket inspector on the boat claimed we had an invalid ticket. Despite having a ticket from Bardolino to Peschiera and being on a boat from Bardolino to Peschiera, he claimed we had not paid enough money as the boat was going via Sirmione, which is a longer route. We had no intention of getting off at Sirmione and there wasn't a direct service from Bardolino to Peschiera for ages and our daughter had started moaning, but this apparently shouldn't have been a problem. The ensuing argument with the ticket inspector was good for my Italian, but not my pocket, as we had to pay a penalty fare. 

Sirmione

Lazise

Bardolino

Desenzano

Bardolino land train tour

2) Verona. It's about 20km away, a very quick train journey, although the trains permitting the cheapest fares are few and far between and it's quite a trek from Verona station into the city centre. There are buses, but we didn't manage to find any - the station area was surrounded by roadworks when we visited in 2013. We didn't find that much in Verona that was child friendly for that three year old in a pushchair other than ice cream and another land train tour, but an older kid that might have heard of the Romans and Shakespeare will probably appreciate the magnificent Arena, and seeing Juliet's balcony at the (alleged) House of the Capulets. Verona is a lovely, lovely city, however, and a must if you have never been.

Juliet's Balcony

Piazza Bra

Arena

3) Venice. Not a day trip we could face with a young child, but it's only 70-90 minutes to get there by train, which isn't necessarily so near yet so far in the right frame of mind. Venice station is right on the Grand Canal, from where you can take the Number 1 vaporetto (waterbus) service through the Rialto and on to St Mark's Square.

4) Gardaland/Aqualand/Movieland. Not for us either (and thankfully closed for most of our most recent visit), but if you don't suffer from terminal vertigo and motion sickness and are into the whole theme park thing then it's probably worth spending a lot of money to hurtle round on rollercoasters for a day with your teenage children.

5) Valeggio and Borghetto. Valeggio is a short bus journey from Peschiera. It's a pretty town lined with tortellini shops and also has the botanical gardens of the Parco Sigurta, which are beautiful. Down the hill and across the river is the medieval village of Borghetto, which has bridges, waterwheels and excellent restaurants serving the aforementioned tortellini and much more besides.

Borghetto

Borghetto Restaurants

View of Borghetto from the Parco Sigurta

Parco Sigurta

Valeggio tortellini

Our time in Peschiera did us the power of good. It felt like the first proper holiday we have had since our daughter was born, as we had some time to relax by ourselves too. We were helped by lovely weather throughout our stay, and just that laid-back Italian lifestyle.

Needless to say, I will be abandoning my principles and checking Eurocamp's website on Black Friday this year. Just in case.