Paradise found

Few British holidaymakers know the tiny Mediterranean island of Formentera – a few miles from Ibiza – better than Denise and Roger Olsson-Hildick, who’ve visited it almost every year since 1981. Denise, a retired Ofsted childcare inspector from New Malden, Surrey, tells Holiday Villas why they keep going back

In 1981 we had a holiday in San Antonio, Ibiza, and spent the entire two weeks trying to be somewhere else! One of our expeditions was a boat trip to Formentera, where we disembarked on Illetes beach.

At that time there wasn’t a landing jetty, so we waded through knee-high water to reach a beach that stretched, as it seemed to us, for miles. And what a beach! The sand was fine and clean. The sea was clear and sparkled in wonderful sunshine. Best of all, there were hardly any people there.

We fell in love with it straight away, and spent the rest of the holiday returning as often as possible. At that time we saw only the beach and didn’t explore the rest of Formentera.

The following year we bought our house, and as a result we were as poor as mice. But when Roger saw a newspaper advertisement for John Astbury’s Formentera holiday company, we decided that we would do without other things in order to pay for an escape to this beautiful island.

When the taxi ride from La Sabina, the port, to Es Pujols took us through the salt flats, we thought we’d arrived in paradise; at least it seemed that way to us. During that holiday we explored the island, on one occasion taking a half-day tour.

We learned that the scenery, small villages and beaches were lovely, but also that places of interest were limited. We looked at two lighthouses, a monument to Jules Verne, a cave and a harbour. Holidaymakers desperate for a record of their stay on Formentera got off the bus to take photographs of the island’s oldest fig tree.

We’ve returned almost every year since, sometimes staying for three weeks. A three-week break is a great way to relax. With busy, sometimes stressful lives, it can take two weeks to unwind properly; an extra week gives us additional energy to face the real world. We had a marvellous four-week holiday in Australia, but when we got back, we looked at each other and agreed it was great, but that we’d missed Formentera.

Over the years the island has been discovered by more and more people; the economy has thrived, but the environment has suffered a little. July and August are particularly busy months, when young people – many of them from Italy – on motorbikes take dreadful risks on the roads making car journeys very tense for drivers who are less than alert.