At last! Half-term holidays are go

Finally, we can book that longed-for family break in February. Here are 25 great escapes for children, parents and, yes, those helpful grandparents too

Admit it – you had forgotten, hadn’t you? What with the children barely back at school, and you still struggling to deal with work, dark nights or resuming regular running, somehow – somehow – the next school holiday (half term runs from February 12-20 this year) is already looming and you haven’t done anything about it.

And this half term really does matter. In the past, the February break has been almost an afterthought. Easter, Whitsun, summer – as parents, we are all over those, maxing out our annual leave to seize every sunny day we can. But, we reasoned, who wants to blow their five precious days of holiday in mid-winter? This time round, after the months we have all endured, we just can’t wait.

In fact, February is precisely the time of year when we most need a holiday. The schadenfreude is off the scale as your plane lifts up out of freezing fog in the UK and sets you down, hours later, in a destination so sunshine-bright and gloriously unfamiliar that it might as well be another planet. And February is a prime month for travel. It is blue-sky season in the Caribbean and the Maldives, and the peak month for snowfall on Alpine slopes. There is also plenty to excite little ones closer to home.

Thank heavens, too, for grandparents, who often muck in during that vital week, bonding with our precious bundles by whisking them off to feed goats at farm parks in the Cotswolds or even – for the intrepid – on an overseas escape somewhere if mum and dad really can’t get out of the office.

Half term may be just a week, but that is still a nine-day stretch which is certainly long enough for an adventure. An adventure that will put a spring in your step until spring, and send the children back to school with their eyes a little wider, and horizons a little broader.