Our Joly delightful Sardinian surprise Travel
Dom Joly expected to loathe his all-inclusive break – then he found the spa and the buffet...
IT WAS half-term. The kids were starting to get restless and suffering from extreme Instagram envy. All of their friends were doing ‘interesting’ things. Why couldn’t we do ‘interesting’ things? So I decided to introduce them to Stansted Airport. This turned out to be a very ‘interesting’ experience.
Flying from Stansted is the travel equivalent of deciding to purchase a kebab in the centre of some violent market town at pub closing time – it’s going to go wrong.
First we encountered a veritable tide of wretched humanity waiting for a bus from the long-term car park. It might just have been their fashion choices, but some looked like they had been there for days. We walked towards an earlier stop. This was another mistake because at Stansted this is viewed as ‘taking the p***’ and several tattooed men with too many children were keen to fight me over this basic tactical decision.
Things didn’t get any better inside the airport. Our easyJet flight was delayed for two hours, which meant bonus drinking time for the tattoos. Once onboard, I had the misfortune to be placed behind a child who had decided to turn his seat into a rodeo horse. After my second drink was spilled, I remonstrated with the cow-kid by giving his seat a stiff shove. This angered his father who, raising his head from several bottles of wine, informed me that, should I do this again, I’d get a ‘smack in the mouff’.
The father continued to threaten me – this made his kid start crying. He then pulled the poor child out of his seat and marched him up and down the plane, telling anybody who’d listen that ‘Dom Joly made the poor lad cry’. It was going to be a long week… We weren’t even going anywhere that downmarket. We were off to Sardinia, home of some flashy private yachts and Silvio Berlusconi’s ‘bunga bunga’ parties. Tacky, but hardly Ayia Napa.
We were off to Forte Village. Just the idea of these kinds of all-inclusive places brings me out in a cold sweat. I’m not a resort type of person. I hate the feeling of being trapped. I hate not making my own travel decisions. I hate being with other tourists. ‘Hell is other people,’ as Jean-Paul Sartre once wrote, probably when he was trapped in a Club Med holiday in Morocco with Simone de Beauvoir.
BUT the thinking behind our destination decision was a familiar one for any parent. If the kids are happy then maybe we, the parents, might get to enjoy ourselves. Oh, and there was a Chelsea academy on site, and my son Jackson is football-mad.
Once we landed in Cagliari we met our driver and headed off into the Sardinian night, praying that psycho dad wasn’t going to be staying at the same resort. The follow- ing morning we nervously scanned the breakfast buffet for enemy fighters but it appeared that we were safe.
Forte Village is set in a wonderful pine forest, nestled between one of the best beaches I’ve ever seen and wild, rugged Mediterranean mountains.
The Village comprises several hotels, suites and private villas, all with access to the cornucopia of activities available. There was tennis, go-karts, bowling, watersports, spas, cricket, football and rugby academies – there were even make-up, magic and DJ academies. Trust me, your kids would have to be serious pains in the behind to play the ‘I’m bored’ card.
We booked Jackson, 12, into the Chelsea academy for the week and pretty much didn’t see him again. I estimate he played about seven hours a day and was the happiest little boy ever. Back of the net, as football folk say.
My studious daughter Parker, 15,
was revising for exams and had to be coaxed into having some fun. We decided to test out the much-hyped thalassotherapy facilities and wandered over to the other end of the village from the Hotel Castello, where we were staying in a couple of adjoining and rather wonderful rooms. We could have rented bicycles to get around but they were an eye-watering €25 a day – you could probably hire a car for less.
This was a source of much grumbling among fellow guests but Marcello, our marvellous hotel manager, explained that this was a deliberate ploy. In high season, the village has 2,000 guests and he asked me to imagine the chaos if they all decided to cycle around at the same time. He had a point. It would be a veritable cyclageddon.
The thalassotherapy was equally expensive – €90 a pop – but again, this was to keep numbers down as otherwise the six pools would start to resemble the long-stay car park bus stop at Stansted and, as we already know, nobody wants that.
SPAS aren’t really my thing but we adored the thalassotherapy. It involved doing very little but lounge about like the Romans would probably have done 2,000 years ago. The only modern addition is a series of water jets that pummel and batter your muscles into contented submission. All of this enforced lethargy came to me surprisingly easily and I spent a wonderful afternoon with my lovely daughter.
It was only when we got back to our rooms that I felt a peculiar and rather disturbing sensation. As a hypochondriac, it got me worried, so when I found my wife Stacey, I took her aside and relayed my symptoms to her. ‘You are overrelaxed. You’re not used to it, so be careful,’ she said sternly.
She appeared slightly distracted from my medical ailments – it turned out that the handsome Italian gentleman who delivered her tea every afternoon was slightly tardy and this had made my wife testy. How we suffer.
The deal is that breakfast and dinner are included if you eat at either the rather glorious buffet or at a more specialised restaurant.
I normally detest buffets – meals feels rushed and disjointed, but the quality and freshness of the one at Forte Village won me over. I tried to restrain my natural hunter-gatherer impulses and not go up for a ninth portion. After supper we’d relax under pine trees, sipping coffees and listening to the urgent squawking of the three parrots that live in the Village.
I have to admit to huge reservations before coming to Forte Village. After seven days, I was loath to leave. I had become used to being cocooned in this rather appealing Italian microcosm. I had become used to doing nothing but eat, drink and be Joly. We’ll probably be back… just not from Stansted.