So you want to go away with the kids. Somewhere relatively near, good weather, no great time difference and good beaches.

Spain? Portugal? France? Cyprus maybe.

All good choices that have been popular with Brits abroad since children were taking ‘O’ levels instead of GCSE’s.

But what about Turkey? Not somewhere I would ever have thought of going, with or without the kids, and I am not sure why really.

There were reports of terrorist attacks at the end of last year in the south of the country and it is next door to Iraq but there has never been any real trouble for tourists.

So when Thomas Cook invited me to go with my wife and two girls to try out their family friendly all-inclusive Paloma Grida Village hotel in Belek, complete with drama club and Brazilian soccer school I did not really know what to expect.

Thomas Cook fly from a variety of airports across the country, including Stansted, which is perfect for us. The kids, who have gone on 12 hour flights the last three years, were chuffed that they only had to spend four hours on the aircraft.

When we arrived in Belek, in the south of Turkey, it was in the middle of a heat wave so even at 5am it was 27C (80F).

We were staying in a pool villa - a bedroom, lounge with two couches/beds and bathroom - with a 5ft square patio outside that had steps straight into a large pool shared by a few other villas.

The beauty of this was it was very quiet and most of the time we had the pool to ourselves together with the benefits of two fridges just a few steps away that were filled every other day with free water, juice and beer.

Elsewhere in the hotel, which is set over 80,000 sq metres, there are three pools:one for those that want to do more than roast in the sun with dance competitions, water volleyball, basketball and other activities, another just for swimming and lazing around and the last contained three water slides of varying speeds.

So when the mercury topped 32C (90F), which it did almost every day, there was plenty of choice where to cool off.

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