It's even worse when one of you has children - and the other doesn't. Ten years on, I think Amanda and Simon still blame us for the fact that Freddie isn't a concert pianist. He certainly heard it that holiday - bellowed by my husband after Freddie tried to fire a catapault into our daughter's face at point-blank range. 'Freddie has never heard the word "No" - it stifles his creativity,' they boasted to us proudly, as he hurled himself fully clothed into the swimming pool, five minutes before we were due to go out to dinner. We knew our friends Amanda and Simon took a relaxed attitude towards parenting but we didn't realise just how relaxed until we shared a villa in Spain with them and their ten-year-old son. Your own can be bad enough, but a week with someone else's hyperactive toddler is enough to turn even the most mild-mannered of us into Supernanny.Īnd you try packing your own children off to bed at a reasonable hour when theirs are still bouncing off the ceiling at midnight, hyped up on fizzy drinks and video games. Because, I have to tell you, no amount of spectacular mountain views make up for a malodorous hole in the ground next to a sign saying 'Beware of the Bears'.īut if there's one thing guaranteed to bring on a major holiday fall-out, it's children. One in six people has chosen to holiday alone in the past 18 months, according to an ebookers survey 'So, you want to give up all this fantastic scenery for a flushing toilet?' they'd sneered, as if I had suggested we book in at the local sewage treatment works. Our friends sulked when I suggested that maybe we could compromise and move on to a different campsite for the second half of the holiday. Quite honestly, a week with Ray Mears would have seemed like the last word in luxury by comparison. Not only were we getting away from civilisation, we were also getting away from electricity, running water and anything else that made life tolerable. They had booked the ultimate get-away-from-it-all campsite, high in the mountains. Unfortunately, what we didn't realise is that our friends had decided this would be the ideal opportunity to get back to nature.
Now, I'm not really a camping kind of girl - my idea of slumming it is a hotel without a spa - but since this motorhome was like the Waldorf on wheels, and North American campsites are known for all their mod cons, I thought that I'd be pretty safe. Which is all fine if they don't mind going it alone, but when they try to make you feel guilty for lying on your lounger, it's a different story.Ī few years ago, we hired a motorhome on the west coast of Canada with another couple. You're looking forward to relaxing on the beach with Joanna Trollope's latest must-read, while their mission is to visit every ancient ruin within a 50-mile radius.
One of the biggest problems with going on holiday with friends is the difference in expectations. That's roughly how long it takes to discover that your caring friend is really a hypochondriac control freak, that her husband's garrulous charm is actually the result of some seriously out-of-control drinking, and that their children are the Spawn of Satan.Īnd who could have guessed that the couple you always thought were so perfectly matched would have such spectacular stand-up rows after a couple of Caipirinhas?Ī fortnight in Dubai is no time to discover you've gone on holiday with the cast of Who's Afraid Of Virginia Woolf.
Testing the friendship: A holiday together isn't always a good ideaīecause no matter how well you think you know your friends, you don't really know them until you've lived under the same roof for a week.