JUST SAYING

Have you sorted next summer’s UK holiday yet? You might be too late. Laura Fowler laments the rise of the super-early-bird booker

There’s still sand in the toes of my shoes and damp swimwear to unpack. Yet already my husband and I are discussing next year’s summer holiday. Not in a wouldn’t-it-be-lovely, daydreamy kind of way, but looking up term dates and making concrete plans. The question is, where?

This summer, after our French-holiday-with-friends plans were thwarted by travel restrictions, we took various short staycations. I’ll be honest – a week’s glamping in the West Midlands wasn’t our first choice. It was our only choice, with every property within striking distance of the coast long snaffled by early-bird bookers.

And yes, it lacked all the things we loved about last year’s French villa holiday. The sun. The beach. The pool. The adjoining vineyard. The TV-room-as-crèche.

Instead we wore coats and did things together. Wet, muddy, tiring things such as canoeing and SUPing, leaping streams and making dens. The children went feral in the woods and taught each other new swear words. In the end, it turned out to be wonderful – a return to the simple summer holidays of my 1980s childhood.

“Can we go back to France next year?” asked the children, who missed the sun, beach, pool – and TV.

Which is what my husband and I, like millions of others, are wondering. Do we snap up an elusive, affordable seaside cottage in Britain now – becoming super-early birds – or hold out for Europe’s shores?

It turns out we’re already too late. UK rental specialists Unique Homestays and Canopy & Stars both say 2022 bookings are up 400 per cent on pre-pandemic levels. According to holidaycottages.co.uk, some people booked for next summer as early as 2020.

The pandemic has created a new tribe of psychopathically

These forwardplanners are nabbing every decent holiday let in Britain

organised forward-planners who are, at this moment, trawling the web nabbing every decent holiday let in Britain – the virtual equivalent of laying their towels on all the sun loungers.

So it seems we’ll be taking our chances on France. And if we’re thwarted? We’ll always have Warwickshire.