I took my spoilt kids to Barbados but they preferred Bognor Regis

My children are spoilt, over-privileged, under-grateful b-----ds. (Don’t worry, they won’t be reading this, as it’s in a newspaper instead of on YouTube or WhatsApp or MoronBox or whatever the latest one is called.)

By the time he’d left junior school, my eldest was able to embarrass me in front of his teacher by declaring he preferred the Seychelles to Mauritius or the Maldives, but liked Oman and Brazil and Mexico better than all of them. Which led me to wonder if he actually appreciated any of them. Cruelly denied the family holidays in Tenby, Harrogate and – one particularly miserable year – Stoke-on-Trent that I endured when I was their age, could he and his brother really relish the boat-fresh squid, oleander-scented air and exotic glamour of the far-flung destinations I’ve dragged them to? Would they not, I sometimes wonder, be just as happy in Bognor Regis? At Butlin’s? With the burger they always covet grumpily, when I insist they try that squid?

Hell, maybe I’d enjoy it too, if I remembered to pack my sense of nostalgia and leave my snobbery at home. So this year I decided to put it to the test: two holidays – one in Barbados, one at Butlin’s in Bognor Regis. I would canvas honest opinions from my kids (aged 10 and 12), report them faithfully (see “Kids’ vote”, below), and then give the correct answer (“Dad’s vote”).

Here’s how it broke down:

The beach

Sun, sea, sand and sewage – Bognor has all the constituents of a classic beach holiday, plus one other, rather unwelcome ingredient. The sign on the shore – declaring that the previous year saw only “16 pollution risk warnings issued” – is probably supposed to be reassuring, but makes me feel like another one must now be due any day, like when it’s been ages since the last bus. That doesn’t stop the kids, mind – it’s the shivery water temperature that does that.

In Barbados, meanwhile, we step barefoot out of the back of our hotel onto a beach of smooth, creamy, borderline-pink perfection, unblemished by stone, coral or seaweed. Little kids fly kites; bigger ones fish from groynes while reggae unspools from their speakers into the warm evening air; and my own boys, in between those ages, splash in and out of the sea with the kind of smiles normally seen only in brochures. Me, I lie back on the caressingly soft sand and try to understand why Unesco hasn’t yet staked out this blissful sliver as a Site of Globally Significant Niceness or something. In this first round, the verdict is unanimous…

Kids’ vote: Barbados

Dad’s vote: Barbados

The accommodation

With 12 different room categories at Butlin’s, there’s a bed for every budget, from bring-your-own-towels-and-beans-in-the-microwave-for-tea to proper-hotel-with-a-spa-and-nice-wraparound-balconies. Ours was small but bright, funkily decorated and had a great seaview – though that was slightly greyer, obviously, than the one from Sea Breeze Beach House, on the south coast of Barbados. Here, the rooms were big and airy enough for the boys to improvise games of cricket inside – then continue outside, on a lovely palm-shaded, fairy-light-strewn lawn (with rum shack placed Dad-pleasingly alongside). The same primary colours that feel a bit forced in Butlin’s seem perfectly right under the Caribbean sun, and it’s lovely to just throw open all the doors and windows and live al fresco for a week.

Then again, at Butlin’s each of the kids’ bunk beds had its own individual television and headphone socket, so no surprise which way they voted…

Kids’ vote: Bognor

Dad’s vote: Barbados

The food

Butlin’s isn’t short on choice, but it’s not long on variety. Options include Burger King, Papa Johns, foot-tall “mega mountain burgers” at The Diner, and a main buffet restaurant serving a different global cuisine every night, but from which my kids somehow always return with chips (on Korean night, boys? Seriously?).

There’s noticeably little fresh mango, plantain, pepperpot, saltfish and split pea soup here – all of which I guzzle like my membership of the middle classes depends on it at Sea Breeze.

There are also plenty of venues to choose from in Barbados, but once we try the buffet restaurant, Mahogany – where I eat my own baggage allowance in crab, lobster, prawn and mussels, while the boys substantially deplete the world’s stocks of key lime pie – we’re tempted to come back every night.

Beyond the resort, we find that even the takeaways have a distinctly West Indies feel. At Chefette (which everyone insists we must try, because it’s Rihanna’s favourite), our fried chicken arrives 17 minutes after ordering – fast food on Caribbean time.

Kids’ vote: Bognor

Dad’s vote: Barbados

Activities

I’m not proud of myself for repeatedly shooting the four-year-old, but points were at stake. And at least this was in the laser-tag game rather than archery.

This is by way of saying that the activities at Butlin’s are very much Not Just For The Kids. I, too, climbed the climbing wall, zipped down the zipwire, had a go on the go-karts and did not dodge the dodgems. I loved all of it – especially the truly world-class waterslides in the splash park – and relished the things I couldn’t face, too (some of the more stomach-churning fairground rides), because I knew I could leave the boys there safely while I got on with some important sitting down in a deckchair.

Even Sea Breeze’s complimentary kayaks, paddleboards and sea-floating trampolines couldn’t compete – and we somehow never made its afternoon bingo sessions.

Kids’ vote: Bognor

Dad’s vote: Bognor

Evening entertainment

I heckle the pangolin (“Pandemic-starter!”), but he’s thick-skinned; all the keratin in those protective scaley plates, presumably. Also, he’s not real – all the animals in the Butlin’s Animal Guyz show are puppets or animatronics. It’s more ethical that way, apparently, but try explaining that to a nonplussed 10-year-old. He and his brother are similarly whelmed (neither under- nor over-) at the Redcoat Talent Show, which puts the camp into holiday camp, and at the various song-and-dance spectaculars – though we all love the traditional Big Top Circus, complete with clowns and acrobats.

Back in Barbados, I lose count of the number of times I witness Bob Marley butchered by croony lounge singers, but Sea Breeze’s Tipsy Tuesday is better than any midweek evening has a right to be. A feet-in-the-sand steel-drum barbecue dissolves via rum sours and bottles of Banks beer into a proper party, the smell of roasting breadfruit and lobster mingling in the moonlight with the irresistible soca music. Cicadas chirrup, the moon sparkles on the sea and, for me at least, it’s a hands-down win.

Kids’ vote: Bognor

Dad’s vote: Barbados

Outside the gate

When the lure of the Butlin’s arcade games wanes (me: 11 seconds; kids: never), slip out the resort’s back door and find a rather lovely little seaside town. A stroll along Bognor’s esplanade reveals an actual fresh-from-the-sea fishmonger’s stall, with barnacled old boats and lobster pots drying picturesquely alongside; a seafood shack the Victorians would recognise, where I buy whelks, prawns and cockles in winningly non-branded containers; and half an 1865 pier (the other half long-since swept away). Once you get past its Legends Sports Bar (and trust me, do go past it), it’s a lovely spot for an impromptu mollusc picnic.

Likewise, you need only saunter 15 minutes up the road from Sea Breeze to get to Oistins, home of the town’s wet market and weekly Fish Fry – another feast-cum-festival with booze and beats. Turn the other way out of the resort and you’re soon in buzzy St Lawrence Gap. If you want to escape other tourists, just keep going until its bright, felt-tip-coloured bars give way to the more peaceful, pencil-case palette of clapboard houses on the edge of town – and, eventually, the lost-world lushness of Barbados’s inland gullies. Because one thing you won’t find in Bognor is tropical jungle…

Kids’ vote: Barbados

Dad’s vote: Barbados

The conclusion

So what have we learnt, kids? That children are idiots. That adults can have a good time in perhaps surprising circumstances. That I liked Barbados better, and my boys enjoyed Butlin’s more, but that it was unexpectedly close, for all of us (despite the vastly different price tags). That it’s important to travel with an open mind, and that doesn’t apply only to foreign-food-phobic tweenagers. And that it’s hard to pick an outright winner in a Barbados vs Bognor battle – but you’ll love trying.

Ed Grenby travelled as a guest of Sea Breeze Beach House; Visit Barbados; Virgin Atlantic Holidays, which has seven nights all-inclusive at Sea Breeze Beach House from £5,200 for a family of four, including flights; and Butlin’s Bognor Regis, which has seven nights at half-term, in a two-bedroom hotel room, from £840 for a family of four, room only, but with most activities and entertainment included.