Judith WOODS

When the terrible email came, my holiday washing was already folded and ready to pack. The suitcases had been taken up from the basement. Papers were cancelled and neighbours given last-minute instructions on watering the garden.

After six months stuck at home, it was almost time to escape – this very Saturday, to a cottage in Norfolk.

Our French sojourn had fallen victim to coronavirus. So we tried to cheer ourselves up and went camping in comically awful weather; we lost the gazebo to a twister and the tent to the torrential rain.

Needless to say, East Anglia felt like Nirvana. For weeks now, I’ve enviously watched footage of staycationers basking in the extraordinary good weather on beaches, while tutting with disapproval at the lack of social distancing in Cornwall.

“I can tell you, WE will be a lot more aware of local sensibilities,” I told the children primly. “We are very lucky to be going away at all.”

Except, suddenly, we weren’t. “We are very sorry to inform you that your holiday at The Thatched Cottage of Your Dreams will not be able to go ahead and has been cancelled,” read Tuesday evening’s email from Cottages.com.

“Extraordinary booking volumes have caused issues in our IT systems, which in turn have led to some duplicate bookings occurring. Unfortunately, your booking has been affected.”

And with that, our summer holiday disappeared into the ether. Not just for my family, but so many others, who immediately took to social media in a state of utter distress.

“Booked a holiday to Devon late last month. Got cancelled via email late yesterday evening – three days before we were meant to go,” wrote one.

“Holiday booked to Scotland last September 2019... we then get our holiday cancelled, leaving the kiddies heartbroken,” said another.

As my husband vented his fury, I hastily called the Norfolk cottage owner in case there had been a mistake and we were victims of a cock-up rather than a conspiracy.

“We haven’t been open since March,” he told me.

“We have asked the agents to stop booking guests, but they haven’t. They take the booking and then they cancel – so every week we get people like you calling us up in a real state.”

Ours was no duplicate, then, but an out-and-out phantom booking that never existed.

So I did what mothers do: put my anger on the back-burner and set about finding an alternative.

Slim pickings until I found a gorgeous barn conversion on Airbnb, which was miraculously free on our holiday dates.

Under the circumstances, I was wary of committing more cash, so I found the farm website and telephoned the host. Turns out, there was no miracle.

“We are fully booked until October,” she told me. “But despite telling the agents, they are still taking bookings on Airbnb and cancelling existing bookings. One man who booked in January has just been told it was cancelled at his own request. He phoned me in tears because he hadn’t asked for any such thing.” We remained dry-eyed in Woods Towers as I scoured websites for boats, caravans and camper vans (despite my husband categorically stating he wouldn’t countenance any of the above). But UK PLC is full.

I contacted Cottages.com because, unlike other punters, waiting fruitlessly on the phone for more than an hour only to be cut off, I went straight to the press office.

I received an apology and a £200 goodwill voucher that I shan’t be using unless everyone else who’s been affected gets one, too.

Besides, there’s nowhere to spend it. We’re halfway through the summer and trying to get away feels like the desperate scramble for loo rolls all over again.

Europe is not a realistic option. Quite apart from any quarantine imposed here on your return, Spain is reeling under local lockdowns, Greece has seen an upsurge in Covid-19, German doctors say their country is in the middle of a second wave, and France is on the brink and could “lose control at any minute”.

I love holidaying in the UK, but that’s pretty much predicated on most of the UK holidaying elsewhere. Right now, demand has outstripped supply and it’s impossible not to feel anguished and deeply mistrustful about phantom bookings.

Take it from me, all you folks casting about for a last-minute deal: if it looks too good to be true, it most certainly will be.

I hope the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge grasp how fortunate they were to bag a day trip to Barry Island this week, even if he insulted all of Wales by openly admitting (why?) he has never seen the iconic Gavin & Stacey.

Holidays are important at the best of times. After these, the worst of times, they have never mattered more.

For so many long months, mothers like me have held things together – working, trying to home educate, serving up three meals a day, keeping tabs on elderly relatives and neighbours and vainly attempting to monitor the screen usage of our bored tweenagers.

Sure, a self-catering cottage (or barge) involves skivvying, but wide skies in a new place change everything.

For a start, it alters the family dynamic. Surely, I’m not the only one to feel suffocated by the stagnant air and low-energy listlessness of lockdown?

Hard – OK, impossible – to confiscate the kids’ mobile phones when there’s little else to do. Easy when they have somewhere new to explore and fresh horizons to discover.

So I’ve taken the executive decision to go camping again. There are still vacancies (whisper it) in the kind of wild sites without showers and with horrid-but-virtuous compostable loos.

I’ve ordered a new tent online. Fingers crossed it arrives in time or I will be setting up our sleeping bags in a field.

The only consolation – and the reason I’m not hysterical – is I have a second booking for a cottage later in August. But I’m now too anxious to look forward.

One more devastating email and summer 2020 could be over.

‘If a lastminute deal looks to good to be true now, it certainly will be’