After decades of parenting, I regret not taking a child-free holiday sooner

Alongside the natural beauty and the inviting blue pool, it is, I think, the silence that strikes us first. An unbroken sense of calm. It’s almost eerie.

We are on holiday, and the children are not with us. There are no waterslides, no doughnut-shaped lilos, and – hopefully – no peeing in the pool. It’s just us, my wife and me, sunbathing quietly. We are not ministering to our young people, and so we barely know what to do with ourselves.

The answer comes in daily increments: nothing. We are here to do nothing, to relax, the inference being that, after two decades of heavy parenting, we’ve earned it. We’re in Crete, at the Arosmari Village Hotel, a small cluster of stone cottages set around a pool and a pretty garden, through which wander several laconic cats, one of them in a tutu (best not to ask).

The village, Vamos, is tiny, a 40-minute drive from the island’s second city, Chania. It comprises a few hilly cobblestone streets, the occasional shop and two tavernas. It’s very quiet. At 6pm each day, a shepherd herds his sheep down the road on what might be the world’s oldest moped. He smiles and waves, so I wave back.

The resort is adults only, which explains the tranquillity. When we were booking the trip with Simpson Travel, that small but key piece of information – “adults only” – was both intriguing and initially unnerving. We arrived expecting a hotbed of White Lotus mischief, perhaps the occasional murder.
In the event, it’s just half a dozen couples who seem to crave, like us, little more than companionable silence and the occasional poolside natter. I read three books in six days.

Blissful, yes, but a little weird, too. We keep feeling we’ve forgotten something. We haven’t been away without our girls for 20 years. Consequently, we text them perhaps a little more than we should. “It’s fine, we’re fine,” comes the response. “Just chill.”

As we are learning, it takes a while to get used to having children who have flown the nest. For the past two decades, we have been four. Now, with both of them off at university, it’s just the two of us again. Before they were born, holidays were backpacking adventures through various corners of South-East Asia, Africa and South America. We’d arrive with our Rough Guides and malaria tablets (Imodium too, always), and perpetually rush to make the next train, boat or bus, like the contestants in the BBC’s Race Across the World, only without the race bit.

When our girls arrived, there was no reason to stop our budget globetrotting, of course, but it transpired that we weren’t quite as intrepid as we thought, and ultimately concluded that European beaches would be less faff. The girls loved these annual events at first – the sea, the endless ice creams – but with adolescence came a greater craving for independence. They didn’t want sunshine any more, they wanted Wi-Fi. They craved cocktails and nightclubs, and started to make fun of my holiday-only sandals. This summer, they want to do their own thing.

If there is a more welcoming holiday destination than Greece, I’ve yet to encounter it. When it finally sorts out its plumbing system – you are still not permitted, in the year 2026, to flush toilet paper down the loo – I might move here permanently.

Crete is new to us, though. While it’s too big and bustling to be as charming as, say, Naxos or Paros, Chania, with its Venetian-style port, thrums with markets and restaurants. And half an hour up the road, its more upmarket counterpart Rethymno does likewise.

For us, however, the real pleasure lies in the tiny villages in between. If Vamos is sleepily seductive, then Gavalochori is almost preposterously attractive, a one-street enclave filled, it seems, with artists and creatives. More cats, too – and any location can be improved by the presence of cats. We follow one of them down a path, and become spellbound as the path opens up into a courtyard where, in front of the prettiest little restaurant I’ve ever seen, an elegant woman serenades diners with song. I almost combust at the enchantment of it all.

Most of the time, though, we laze around the pool alongside our fellow guests, several of them at retirement age, which makes us feel young. It’s nice, in your fifties, to feel young again.

The two of us talk, too, a lot, more than we have done in years; with children around, every conversation is invariably interrupted, but not here. We even hold hands. And then we go to the pool again. I think this is what they call quality time.

How to do it

Simpson Travel offers a week at Arosmari Village Hotel from £1,099pp, based on two sharing, including flights, breakfast and car hire. www.simpsontravel.com