The Daily Telegraph - Saturday - Travel
Thanks, mum – this place is ‘super chilled’
A potential logistical nightmare turns into a heavenly holiday for eight, writes Allison Pearson
The checklist of preferences and prejudices that must be ticked off before arriving at the perfect summer holiday can be long indeed. Mine went like this: two families comprising eight people. Four (older) kids. Five sun-worshippers. Two shade-seekers. One gym bunny. Three watersports fanatics. Two nervous swimmers (one of whom won’t enter the sea). One adventurous spirit who won’t sit down. Four sunloungers who prefer to remain horizontal, unless changing into a new bikini. Two dads serious about their wine, two mums happy to knock back anything so long as it’s cold. One nut allergy. One coeliac. Four serious foodies. Three kids who love the sociability and organised activities of a hotel. One grown male who has an existential crisis if he so much as sees the words “fancy dress night”. Four adults who prefer the rural tranquillity offered by a villa. Two girls who want to go clubbing with other tireless 20-yearolds til sunrise. One fifty-something dad whose idea of bliss is watching the sunset-swallows dipping into the swimming pool while reading Birds of Greece. So, no pressure, then. It was a logistical nightmare, and seven people were counting on me to get it right. All I can say is, thank the Lord for the Peligoni Club. From the moment we walked into the club reception, located on the untouristy north-eastern coast of the Greek island of Zakynthos, I knew that Mum was not going to carry the can for choosing somewhere that was Not Cool. The clubhouse vibe lies somewhere between Caribbean beach-bar and bucolic literary festival with a whitewashed, bare-boarded splash of Cape Cod thrown in.
There is a spacious bar with plenty of rattan sofas, a lovely open-air restaurant festooned in greenery and sunbeds stepping down to the turquoise Ionian sea.
The place exudes serenity, but also a shimmering sense of pleasure and possibility. Our teenagers said they felt they had stumbled onto the film set of Mamma Mia! A favourable impression helped, no doubt, by the sun-kissed, super-fit young British waiters and waitresses and the Boat Boys, who teach you to windsurf, waterski or sail. Like most of the staff, they are young – many are gap-year students who holidayed at Peligoni themselves as children – and this adds to what I would call a happy, carefree atmosphere, and the kids call “super chilled”.
The clubhouse may feel like one of the nicest boutique hotels you’ve ever seen, but it has no rooms. Instead, guests stay in a choice of accommodation, some within easy walking distance, and others, like ours, a winding, 15-minute drive past olive groves, goats and a goatherd who looked like the god Pan himself.
It was quite a steep and bumpy ride, particularly in our two midget hire cars, but, oh, the delights that awaited us. It is hard to imagine a more heavenly place than Villa Stouvega. Tucked into the hillside, Stouvega has natural terraces affording glorious views across to the hump-backed island of Kefalonia, which rises from the ocean like the Loch Ness Monster. Built in honeyed stone, the rambling villa is full of “character”, which is too often code for “lots of old, dusty stuff that gives you an electric shock”, but this villa is phenomenally well equipped with more fridges than you could ever fill and herbs growing outside the back door.
My friend Jane, a keen cook, was in raptures and we both agreed on the almost orgasmic pleasure of two dishwashers. That might seem a small point but, when two families are sharing, being able to have one dishwasher on while you stack dirty stuff in the other, rather than leaving it to fester, avoids one of those minor