Choosing a holiday

How do you choose where to go on holiday? We used to rent a holiday cottage or caravan in England or aboard and have had some wonderful times with the children.

Brittany

In recent years our children have gone on holiday with their partners and our holidays have changed without them, and we have choosen to go on more organised holidays. We like exploring and getting to learn about a country rather than lying on a beach and soaking up the sun.

There are always so many countries and places to visit that it is always difficult to decide where to go. We like to plan it well in advance, so that we have time to look forward to it.

Up in the Alps in Switzerland near Interlaken

Croatia

Last year we went to Croatia and on a free day we went on a days trip on an old fishing boat around some of the islands. The twenty or so passengers were all nationalities - German, Irish, English, Italian, Chinese and Cypriots and we had a wonderful day out together.

When we returned off holiday we went on the internet to see if we could find any holidays that catered for small numbers and a holiday visiting the Highlands in Scotland came up at the top of the list. We visited Edinburgh for my 40th birthday 9 years ago and walked past a amazing poster in a shop window showing the Highlands and immediately agreed to return one day to do this.

So this is where we have just been on holiday, and the views were even more amazing than I remember from that poster......

We travelled over 700 miles in 5 days visiting the North West part of the Highlands and also stayed on the Isle of Skye for 2 nights. The scenery was breathtaking, particularly when the sun shone! It felt so remote and the area so vast and unpopulated. The air was fresh and it was just so peaceful.

We have been to Wales and Ireland previously, but this landscape was for me even more beautiful than what I have seen in other places. We travelled with an award winning local Scottish company Rabbies and would never have been able to visit so many magnificent places in 5 days without them. There were 12 others in our party, who came from all around the world - India, Poland, New Zealand, Taiwan, and America. It added to our experience to share our holiday with such a nice group of people. Neil, our tour guide and driver was excellent and shared with us many amazing stories and Scottish music.

The pictures of the mountains look almost unreal, don't they? We are still sorting through our pictures so this won't be the last you see of Scotland on here! We had a mixture of rain and sunshine on our holiday but the sun kept shining when it really mattered.  Have you got any holidays planned soon I would love to here what you are doing too. In the meantime the only mountains I will be seeing are mountains of washing and ironing!

Sarah x