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In July this year we flew off to Sardinia on the new Jet2 service from Edinburgh. Our plan was to fly in to Olbia in the north hire a car and explore the island before flying home from Cagliari in the south. Our first port of call was the La Maddalena islands just a short hop across on the ferry from the northern most point of Sardinia and what a great choice. These islands are really beautiful and we stayed in the very designer La Maddalena hotel and yacht Club. The hotel was very chic Italian but a bit sterile for our tastes. Although not far from the town and harbour area it was not really walkable so we were glad we had the car.

We don’t normally travel in school holidays but this year we did and it was quite a shock to the system, not only was it the Scottish holidays, it was the Italian holidays too and the beaches were packed with Italian families soaking up the sun and although all very beautiful you couldn’t really get away from the crowds.

We like a mixture of activities when we are holiday and also to avoid the heat. Our next stop was up in the mountains at the Sa Muvara hotel in the lovely little town of Aritzo. We were hoping to do some walking and in normal circumstances this would have been possible but it was still as hot as on the coast at 34 degrees! Even the hotel manager said it was unusual – he hadn’t seen it this hot in 10 years and this was in the town that used to export blocks of ice to the coastal towns well into spring each year in the days before air conditioning and fridges!

Our next port of call was to the south to the Forte Village Resort a few miles outside of Cagliari. A resort that was both family orientated as well as Italian designer label focussed. We found it hugely expensive. However, the food was excellent, the staff helpful and the resort has a lot of activities for everyone from cookery demonstrations with Gordon Ramsey, football with occasional coaching visits from Chelsea FC , tennis and rugby academies and a most fabulous spa which I just had to try!

We loved Sardinia but if we did go back it would be off season and to the smaller family run hotels like Sa Muvara.