Last updated 15:42, Tuesday, 11 November 2008

IN MY last column I gave Mike a hard time for insisting we all sleep on a freezing mountainside on the final night of our summer holiday.

“It had seemed like a great idea at the time,” he admitted the following day.

Well, I must confess, as I spent the first day of the recent half term holiday driving through torrential rain and floods en route to Oban I was beginning to mutter to myself: “It all seemed like such a good idea a few weeks ago.”

I had the week off, Mike was taking part in a mountain marathon (yes, THAT mountain marathon) followed by a busy week at work, so I had decided to head off with the kids. We were after sea and sand but couldn't afford the Mediterranean variety so there was only one thing for it: the Hebrides...

I found a cottage to rent on the Isle of Coll (population 140) and, to keep costs down, decided to leave the car on the mainland and take two bikes and a borrowed tagalong bike across.

I told the kids we’d be staying at the seafront youth hostel and would have to get up in the middle of the night and cycle to the ferry terminal. I hadn’t realised quite how an exciting a prospect this was until the woman at the hostel said there was a car park next to the ferry terminal so we wouldn’t have to cycle anywhere. Millie went very quiet and, when I asked what the matter was, she said tearfully: “I wanted to cycle in the night with my rucksack and head torch.”

And so we parked the car the following morning and cycled round Oban in the dark, before heading for the ferry terminal!

There were blue skies and big waves on the five-hour ferry crossing but it was such a relief to be sailing after the previous week of storms when countless ferries had been cancelled.

When we arrived on the island, the wind was behind us as we cycled through the tiny village and on to our cottage on a farm, surrounded by Shetland ponies, peacocks, chickens and roosters (which jumped on B’s windowsill every morning and woke her up).

The setting was fantastic, the weather was great, the cottage was FREEZING. The sort of place you walk into and have no desire to take your hat or coat off. And so I taught B to set and light a fire, which she did every morning thereafter.

I had warned B and Millie that on the island there would be no telly, no telephone, no mobile signal. Hats, gloves and head-to-toe waterproofs would be the uniform; bracing bike rides, walks on the beach, reading and cards would be the order of the days.

The friendly seals, noisy geese, wild seas, blue skies and picnics in the huge sand dunes were an added bonus.

As the sun went down every afternoon I’d have to drag them off the beach, where they would be sliding down dunes, rounding up jelly fish or hunting for crabs.

It was such a pleasure to step out of the world of mobile phones and rolling news bulletins (the papers in the shop were three days old).

Shortly after setting sail on the way home, my phone went berserk and started spewing out messages which had been stacking up through the week: back to reality.