When I told friends I was going to Ibiza on holiday, their response was, 'You?' (snigger). 'Aren't you a bit old for that?' (followed by more sniggers). 'But it's not all clubbers,' I stammered to looks of disbelief, 'honest!'

I had some of the best holidays of my life on the island between the ages of 13 and 19 from the early Eighties, when my mum organised an exchange with a local girl so I could improve my Spanish. When I first arrived in Roca Llisa, Mari-Carmen's home, I thought I'd died and gone to heaven. The scent of pine and rosemary, bougainvillea tumbling everywhere and sun, sun, sun (this was the first hot country I'd been to). I couldn't help thinking trips to the Tower of London and Wendy's Hamburgers were poor returns for her.

It was the days when travel agents still pronounced the island A-Pizza and the charters were full of beer-swilling blokes with blond highlights, and loud girls in white stilettos. Privilege (home of Manumission) was known as Ku and Café del Mar in San Antonio was unknown outside Ibiza.

We used to walk down to a tiny cove near her home called Cala Olivera and sunbathe topless. We would drive to little towns such as Santa Eulalia, and take the ferry to Formentera, where we frolicked in crystal-clear waters.

I wanted to see if that nice stuff still existed; if you could visit the island without seeing a clubber. Okay, so it's like asking to go to the North Pole without seeing snow, but I was sure it could still be done.

My only fear was the flight, but I was proved wrong. The Britannia charter from Gatwick was clubber-less. We were in pushchair city (I counted 12 piled up at the gate) and the only people under 30 on the plane were either in nappies or not long out of them.

And five days into the holiday I still hadn't heard a squeak of clubby music. The background sounds in the bars were more Julio Iglesias than acid (some things never change). The resorts of Cala Llonga and Puerto de Sant Miguel were full of families on package holidays. It was all kids marching behind attendant holiday reps, and mums and dads building sandcastles.

Down at Cala Mastella beach, we visited El Bigotes (the moustaches) - a restaurant overlooking the water, run by a man with a big moustache who cooks only what he has caught that morning in his nearby boat.

No, I'm definitely not too old for Ibiza.