E L T I P S V R T

To clarify, they are no longer really children, being both in their twenties, so it has been a while since we had a family holiday together.

For the past few years they have had more exciting things to do – but they did concede they would join us if we came up with an interesting destination, meaning somewhere that looked good on Instagram.

Fortunately they, like us, are not much interested in luxury, or else it would have been out of our reach.

Enter Georgia, not the US state but the Eurasian nation that was once part of the Soviet Union.

In recent years it has become one of the rising stars in the travel world, for three main reasons: food, wine, and trekking, and it was the latter in particular that the kids were interested in. As was I.

But we happily combined two, wading through a massive breakfast at 1,500 metres in the hill-station town of Mestia in the Caucasus mountains.

A breakfast that seemed to go on and on: eggs, cheeses, aubergines, pickles and flatbreads straight from the oven. And all that we couldn’t eat, we could take with us.

Mestia is the main town in the mountainous region known as

Svaneti, whose Svan people have their own language and traditions.

Their villages bristle with defensive towers like something out of Game of Thrones, dating back to a time when it was survival of the fittest up here.

That warrior culture has long since gone, as have many of the people, but fortunately the Transcaucasian Trail is bringing new life to old stones.

Hiking along a remote trail in an unfamiliar country carries a lot of unknowns. I did wonder whether we were going to get lost, whether we’d go hungry, or even whether there’d be such a thing as hot water. But that was all part of the adventure.

Fortunately, the Mestia to Ushguli route is now so well-trodden that the villagers knew exactly what we

IF you are interested in trekking, leave Georgia’s capital city Tbilisi for another time, but instead fly with Wizzair direct from Luton to Kutaisi. It is much closer to the mountains.

SEVERAL websites have hiking descriptions with useful information. See caucasus-trekking.com.

THE trail is particularly popular in late summer, so reserve a place in village guesthouses via booking.com. They

all use it. trekkers needed. The path turned out to be clearly marked with splashes of red and white paint, and it moved from forest to meadow, riverside to ridge.

For most of the first couple of days we were skirting the flanks of Mount Tetnuldi, loving the views of mountains rolling off into the distance, some peaking in snow.

Medieval

It was all swiftly on Instagram, as was Adishi, our destination on day two. This village was particularly medieval-looking, but it also had half a dozen guesthouses.

We chose Elizabeth’s place after spotting the woman herself making flatbreads on a wood-burning stove in her outdoor kitchen.

Around the table that evening