ESSENTIALS

The Gambia Experience (01489 866939; gambia.co. uk) offers seven nights at Coco Ocean Resort & Spa from £999pp including flights, in-flight meals,

20kg hold luggage and transfers. A three-night add-on at Mandina Lodges costs from £299pp including internal transfers and half board (longer durations and packages also available). Flights depart from London Gatwick, Birmingham and Manchester.

The company will run regular birdwatching tours this season led by local guide Malick Suso.

The best time to visit is between October and April. balance between gentle relaxation and the captivating sights and sounds of West Africa.

Like most places to stay in this compact country (roughly half the size of Wales), Mandina is just 30 minutes’ drive from the airport, so we were enjoying a cooling swim by early afternoon. The creek by the lodge is strictly out of bounds because of crocodiles, but the large, shaded pool is the ideal place to watch the local wildlife. A pied kingfisher – twice the size of our familiar species, and with a punk-rocker hairdo – regularly took a dip in the clear water, much to our delight.

Mandina has just nine lodges – some on stilts over the creek, others set back in the surrounding Makasutu Forest. It manages a delightful blend of luxury and informality, with excellent food and service, a relaxed feel and, most importantly, no Wi-Fi. That meant our children had to speak to us for four whole days.

Best of all, I had my very own bird guide: Alajie Bojang, known as AJ. On our first morning, while the family enjoyed a lie in, I rose at dawn and we headed out for a walk. Familiar species, such as swallows, hawked for insects overhead, while the more exotic ones included bee-eaters, hornbills and glossy starlings, whose dazzling plumage made our birds look rather drab.

By midmorning, as the temperature reached 30C (86F), it was back to the lodge to meet my wife Suzanne and the children for breakfast. We decided to stay around the pool in the heat of the day, but as the sun began to set, we headed out on to the creek for a leisurely, tailor-made cruise. Seeing large flocks of egrets, and a giant kingfisher the size of a crow, even my usually apathetic kids were entranced, pointing out each new species. The highlight was an osprey – which might well have nested in Scotland earlier in the t year – plunging down and a grabbing a huge fish right in front of us.

As we edged out into the wide estuary e of the Gambia river, AJ showed us the mangroves that t make up more than a third of the co country’s vegetation. They stop the river r banks eroding, preventing floo flooding, and are incredibly useful. The leav leaves are boiled to make a rich indigo dye dye, AJ explained, while the termite-resistant termite-resistan branches are used for furniture and the th oysters clinging to the roots are cooked co and eaten.

As the tide dropped, we began to notice creatures on the exposed mud: crabs shuffling sideways, and mudskippers – half fish, half amphibian – hauling themselves out of the water.

The following afternoon, I was sitting on our lodge’s upper balcony, engrossed in a book, when it finally dawned on me that the noise and

I watched a woman expertly chopping up a huge barracuda that glinted silver and white