How to hack your summer holiday

Since it’s June, here is your cut-out-and-keep guide to hacking your summer holiday.

One possibility. Don’t bother. Unless you have school-age children, why book your main overseas holiday in what is the nicest part of the year at home? As my late father often reminded me: ‘The three worst things about living in Britain are January, February and March.’ If you head south in these three months, almost anywhere will be an improvement. When flying in July, you risk sitting on the tarmac at Gatwick on a perfect summer’s day destined for a place where your shoes will catch fire. And you miss out on the long, light evenings, too.

But it’s hard to generalise. After 40 years of holiday-making, I have only one firm conclusion. Holidays where you have a car are better than those where you don’t. It’s simple serendipity. With a car you are far more likely to make a surprise discovery – whether it’s a beach, a café, a restaurant or even an underrated town or city.

It is ultimately these little surprises that stick in the memory. Other modes of transport confine you to mainstream destinations, giving you little idea of how real life is lived overseas. And half the pleasure from going abroad lies in doing everyday things in a foreign place – going to a French hypermarket and stocking up on bottles of Pschitt!, for instance, thereby allowing you to enliven the rest of the holiday with increasingly infantile puns.

If you are planning to rent a car in Spain, Portugal or France (or to take your own there), I can recommend the excellent emovis-tag.co.uk – a UK website which lets you buy the little tags for your vehicle that let you use the express-pay lanes on motorways.