Faro

I needed an excuse to plan a long weekend at the end of May, and I might just found a good one. Thanks to some points I'd accumulated from previous ski trips with Club Med, I found an off-season, three-day getaway in Da Balaia, near Faro, Portugal.

This is your typical all-inclusive resort, sitting somewhere towards the less glamorous end of the Club Med portfolio, which suited us just fine. Thanks to the off-season prices, we paid less than we would have spent staying somewhere in the UK for the same Bank Holiday weekend.

Our (highly detailed) daily itinerary looked something like this:

Wake up → walk to the enormous breakfast buffet → slowly migrate to the pool → return for the lunch buffet → crawl to the beach → play some ping-pong, mini golf, and archery → head back for the enormous dinner buffet → collapse into bed. (Repeat)

The secret to a successful all-inclusive holiday is simple: keep the restaurant within easy walking distance and minimise the moving effort required between meals.

We were lucky enough to visit just before the school half-term holidays, so the resort wasn't overrun by kids. It was, however, mysteriously overrun by French people. I'm still investigating.

It's probably not somewhere I'd rush back to, as I think Spain, Greece, and Italy have much better beaches. But for the price, this corner of Portugal made for a very enjoyable long weekend escape.

It also confirmed my long-standing theory that Portugal is best experienced on a food-focused road trip along the coast rather than from a resort.