It was raining when we left Gatwick, dousing the vestigial guilt we had been feeling as we abandoned the children to the care of a cousin and headed for sun, sand, sea and - exercise.
We were on our way to La Manga Club, an oasis in the southern Spanish desert - a valley of lemon groves surrounded by rich, red rock, where only 6-12 inches of rain fall each year and even in January the daytime temperature averages 18C.
The immediate countryside includes dramatic lunar landscapes, spectacular beaches and a huge inland sea. Within easy reach, the 2,500-year-old port of Cartagena offers shopping and sightseeing. But if you wish, you need never stray beyond the discreetly patrolled tree-lined streets that link tennis, golf and swimming to hotel, apartments and restaurants.
An American first opened a country club here in the 1970s, and went bust trying to make it work. Its success as a holiday centre dates from the late 1980s when P&O bought the resort and turned it into something between the opulence of Boca Raton in Florida and the domesticity of the Pierre et Vacances holiday villages of Brittany.
The main hotel is everything a five-star holiday hotel should be - spacious, beautifully decorated, yet relaxed enough that you don't feel self-conscious in your less than pristine shorts and with swimming-pool hair sticking out at all angles. Not so luxurious but very comfortable are the 60 Las Lomas self-catering apartments in a neat terraced village.
The rest of the resort is made up of some 1,600 privately-owned villas and apartments; some are time-shares, some are bolt-holes for owners, and some are semi-permanent residences. The vast majority of visitors are British, and the other cold bits of Europe - Germany and Scandinavia -are much in evidence, though a quarter of visitors are Spanish.
The Club has more than 20 places to eat. Within the hotel are serious gourmet dining at the Amapola restaurant and snacks and light meals in the lively bars. Elsewhere, cafés and restaurants are clustered at Las Lomas, at the tennis centre, and in the commercial square. You can choose from Spanish, Italian, Mexican, seafood and "Euromerican" - burgers and chips. Self-caterers can stock up at the resort's new supermarket.
The whole La Manga complex covers 1,400 acres - larger than Monaco. This gives it the scale to sustain an enormous range and quality of leisure facilities, restaurants and social activities, but the downside is that activities that would be five minutes' walk apart in a typical holiday village can take three of four times as long to reach. There are occasional small shuttle buses but, not surprisingly, many visitors rely on cars to get around the site. This might disappoint parents with small children looking for a relaxed, car-free and safe environment, though the parents we spoke to seemed perfectly happy.
The facilities, particularly golf and tennis, are hard to equal anywhere in Europe, and are designed not just for the holiday family but for the professionals. Some weeks, the club hosts major sporting events - five Spanish golf Opens, Federation Cup tennis, the Nordic Soccer Cup (national teams playing a winter tournament); and club and national squads use the eight-pitch football centre for training weeks.
During our stay we ran into the footballers of Derby County (not quite as glam as those from Real Madrid who followed a fortnight later), and we spent a couple of enjoyable evenings in the company of Gavin Hastings, Rory Underwood, Jonathan Davies, Willie John McBride and Ian Robertson who were competing in a charity pro-am golf week.
Our first stop was the three championship golf courses. The proper golfers we spoke to were delighted with them, but as non-handicap hackers we felt a little intimidated. More fun was the par 47 pitch-and-putt course, beautifully manicured lawns and miniature palms with a devilish final hole on an island. We both got round in about 30 over par.
Equally impressive are the tennis facilities with 22 courts - 14 of them clay, and if you haven't played on clay, well you should, and then you'll understand why Rusedski and Henman can't win the French Open; it really is completely different from the grass and municipal tarmac we are used to in Britain.
If you are serious about your tennis, you can arrange to play all week and even enter one of the weekly tournaments. Or you can hire an early-morning court, as we did, though in July even at 8am the summer heat will be too much for some.
The water-sports centre is a few minutes away on the Mar Menor, where around 1,000 years ago a pencil-thin sandbar rose from the sea to enclose what is now Europe's largest salt-water lagoon. It has everything from sailing to jet-skis to windsurfing.
One day, we headed for the beach, hiring mountain bikes for £10 each. We found a gorgeous stretch of almost deserted white sand and warm sea. Then we huffed and puffed our way back, via a very cold beer in Los Belones, where at 4.30pm only the barman seemed to have gone back to work after siesta.
We hired a car for a day to explore, taking the coastal road to Cartagena, a huge natural harbour where Phoenician, Carthaginian and Roman ships all moored before the Arab conquest of southern Spain. Cartagena is not yet ready for the non-Spanish-speaking tourist, though: you can't get a map anywhere, and don't expect the locals to speak English in shops and restaurants - though it's only an hour from Alicante this is Spain at its most rural. But if you dread the Spain of Torremolinos, Cartagena is a godsend.
Back at La Manga, we spent a last evening with our new rugby chums, followed by a midnight stroll across the South golf course in bare feet on soft turf - a hazardous activity since the sprinklers, part of a £1m computer-controlled irrigation system, can come on without warning.
Next morning, there was just time for a last breakfast on the terrace, a last dip in the pool, and then on to the bus back to the airport. We've promised to go back and, next time, take our sports-mad teenage sons with us.
The practicals
Barwell Leisure (020-8786 3000, www.barwell.com) specialises in La Manga packages. Four nights in the hotel Tuesday-Saturday costs £368 until February 9, £488 until Easter and £558 in high season,including B&B accommodation, flights from Gatwick to Murcia, transfers, and a pass for a round of golf, squash and use of gym and health spa. The same packages at Las Lomas, based on six sharing a self-catering apartment, would cost £318, £338 and £398 respectively. Renting a Ford Ka costs about £25 a day from Centauro's in La Manga village. Green fees for 18 holes are £30 plus, extra for the hire of clubs, trolleys etc. Pitch-and-putt course is £5. Tennis costs £10 per hour, gym and spa £8 an hour, boules £1.40 an hour, bowling £4.50 an hour. Further information: www.lamangaclub.com and www.lamanga.com.
