Turkey feast for all the family,
CONVERSATIONS around the pool speak volumes about this action- packed summer sizzler. ‘He dragged me out of my sun lounger, made me go sailing, hit me on the head with the boom — and then we capsized,’ says a teenager pointing accusingly at her father. Then a woman pipes up: ‘ I’ve just discovered I have a limb without a bruise on it. Can we go out on a boat and rectify it?’ ‘Have a beer instead,’ says her husband. It’s day one of our Neilson beach club holiday on the Turkish shores of the Aegean. Plopped pale and wobbly in our Quiksilver wetsuits, we’re all a bit like the Mr Men and Little Misses in the books children have left lying near the pool.
Over there is Mr Jelly resting in an inflatable flamingo, his bald head and tummy a Pantheon and Taj Mahal, shiny with sun cream. And here’s Little Miss Curious, plotting her afternoon adventures.
In normal life, Mr Jelly might be Sir Andre Geim, the Nobel prize-winning physicist who invented graphene.
It’s utterly liberating to lose one’s identity for a while — a way of clearing the decks for more important business. The Neilson motto is: ‘ Relax as hard as you like’. Neilson regards relaxing as very important indeed.
For us, a typical day of relaxing goes like this: 7am tennis with the ‘Yorkshire terror’ coaching genius Leah Oldroyd, dispenser of pithy advice (‘The only word you need to know in doubles is YOURS!’), commentary (‘Five minutes later he finally gets to the net’) and withering questions (‘Are we tossing up a serve or launching a satellite?’).
By 9.30am, the children — Theo, 13, and Sebastian, eight — are at their clubs. The former is at Surfbuster, the latter is in the Surf Squad. They are busy all day — and busy all evening, too, as holiday friendships blossom.
Our Surfbuster has the following agenda on a single day: paddle-boarding, water pong, swimming, lunch, feed the fish, chill out, manhunt, pool olympics and circle games. Water pong is ping-pong in a pool. Nothing smelly about it.
Meanwhile, we grab Lisa Jewell’s The Girls (everyone is reading it) and make a beeline for one of the daybeds.
Prize territory. Indeed, there are tensions. An edict goes out — no daybed-grabbing before 8am.
At about 10am, the real action starts. Vroooom! go the water skiers. Whoosh! go the catamarans. Thwick thwack! go the dinghy sails. Oompah! goes the Zumba class. Whizzzz! go the road bikes.
There are more than 20 free activities. If you are sporty, it takes a will of iron to sit still. BY MID-MORNING on day two, overheard exchanges include: ‘Can’t stop, Henry, late for level two.’ ‘See you at volleying clinic, George.’ ‘Annie! Battle of the bands at six.’ And the family debates. Windsurfer or paddle board? Lager or gin fizz? Yoga or spa?
Afternoons are perfect for sailing. Our Turkish dinghy instructor, Omer, who has a Fu Manchu moustache, tells stories of knots and capsizing that become one of the highlights of the day
despite headlines about a military coup and state of emergency in Turkey, beach club Phkaia, on the west coast, was booming and felt completely safe.
There were 200 British holidaymakers and 150 children staying there. About half of the 150 staff at Phokaia are Turkish and cheerful as they make sure life’s humdrum necessities just ‘happen’.
We go into nearby Foca village for supper and watch the fishermen playing pishti, a card game, in their boats, flashing the cards in the kerosene lamplight.
The income gap is obscene, but there is no trace of the unwanted attention tourists get in Istanbul.
Frosty, aka Richard Frost, the club manager says the secret of Neilson is that despite growing into a 70 million business with eight beach clubs and 25 ski resorts at the last count, it is a family. Pete
and Pip Tyler founded it in 1978, and they are still fully involved and know all the key people.
That’s how they keep staff such as John Doel, the activities manager who once coached Putin at tennis (‘a pretty good player’) and John’ s girlfriend Erin Jeffery, a British national freestyle swimmer.
It’s also a large part of how they keep repeat guests. After just seven days, it takes an hour for the airport buses to leave, such is the hugging and email-swapping on the Tarmac. Many Mr Men and Little Misses will be back next year and, for a sizeable minority, even three Neilson holidays a year are not quite enough.