“NOO. I don’t want to go in the car. I want to go in the bus,” wailed Lucy, on her fourth birthday, as we cruised out of Benidorm in an air-conditioned rental car. The fact was that after experiencing the crowds of one of the Costa Blanca’s most infamous Brit resorts, Lucy’s aspirations extended no farther than the hotel pool and the beach.

Lucy liked the shuttle bus that hugged the coast but disliked car trips into mountain villages because they took her too far from the sea.

I knew how she felt. Our patch of peak-season paradise was proving seductive. For a start, we weren’t on Benidorm’s Levante side, favoured by the Brits, but on Poniente beach, geared more towards the local market. I’d feared that Benidorm would be relentlessly anglicised, but with its high-rise buildings and backing of sheer mountains it felt strangely exotic, with echoes of Rio.

It took a while, on our first day, to get to the beach. Not because it was a long way, but because the hotel swimming pool came first. Lucy quickly bonded with a lithe Spanish girl who she pursued until she found an English-speaking Sophie about her own age. Then we showed her the tunnel under the road that led to the sea and she never looked back.

South of Poniente beach the city is growing to engulf Finestrat, a small sheltered cove, ringed by restaurants, with a leisurely charm of its own. Ten minutes farther down the coast were the pastel seafront buildings of Vilajoyosa, where restaurants and ice-cream parlours lined up overlooking a quieter stretch of sand.

Best of all, the Playa de los Estudiantes, a quiet, shingle beach just out of town, with a wooden stall selling essentials (beer), free parking and no crowds. This became a firm favourite, at its best one rough day when I rolled in the shallows while Lucy was knocked over, laughing hysterically, by wave after wave. If I could think of a better way of exercising and exhausting young children I’d patent it and die rich.

Exhaustion was, of course, a slight problem. On the Spanish side of the resort it seemed sensible to keep to Spanish hours, but neither Lucy nor I have ever got the hang of siestas. However, thick, light-proof curtains helped to keep mornings late, and this slight shift to our schedule meant that Lucy could make the most of evenings.

Sometimes we took the bus into Benidorm, where tapas bars varied from those offering a huge variety to the humble simplicity of quiet bars offering little more than a chunk of sheep’s cheese as the perfect partner for a glass of rioja.

To celebrate Lucy’s fourth birthday I thought we should try Benidorm’s Levante side, where a couple of bars advertised English magicians. But the one we tracked down was festooned with signs offering cut-price Tetley’s bitter so we went instead to a big beachfront restaurant, where Lucy could order chicken and chips from pictures. I should have followed suit as my seafood paella seemed scraped from the seabed and gently heated.



Then we struck lucky with a city centre funfair, where harassed young staff showed an overworked disregard for height restrictions and Lucy was able to try a number of rides for which she was clearly too short. She loved it.

Way after even my bedtime we passed a restaurant near our hotel. Lucy reached out towards a saucer of nuts, and the owner noticed. She wrapped up a little package for Lucy to take home, which she clutched tight and opened in bed.

Lucy’s a well-travelled child, who’s already been to Goa, Kenya and Mauritius, but Benidorm fitted perfectly into her picture of a sunny world where each holiday is slightly better than the one before.

Forget its tacky image — as far as Lucy’s concerned the Costa Blanca is even more fun than long-haul luxury.

Need to know

Getting there: Jack Barker and family travelled to Benidorm with Thomas Cook Holidays, (0870 0109386, www.thomascook.com), staying at the Poseidon Playa on Poniente beach. It charges from £459 per adult and £269 for the first child (2 to 12) and £299 for the second for a week in August.

Weekly car hire with Avis (0870 0100287, www.avis.co.uk) from £113.

Need to know: Day tickets for Terra Mítica (00 34 965 004300, www.terramiticapark.com) which opens next Saturday, cost £23.60 for adults and £17.90 for children 5-11.

Further information: Spanish National Tourist Office (020-7486 8077, www.tourspain.co.uk).

Kiddie heaven

ON our last night in Benidorm we took Lucy to Terra Mítica, Paramount’s huge theme park in the mountains. In peak season it’s open until midnight, so the sun was dropping as we stepped into ancient Egypt, and Lucy, as far as she could tell, had arrived early in Heaven.

Themed around the ancient civilisations of Rome, Greece and Iberia, there were rides that floated us down cavernous waterways, where we shot infra-red guns at looming monsters, flashed us over waterslides in family-sized boats, and sent Lucy off on countless merry-go-rounds, swinging arm centrifuges and general stomach-churners.

The organisers claim that there are 15 rides just for small children, but there seemed to be more, and most experiences were open to accompanied infants, including a child-scale rollercoaster quite terrifying enough for Lucy and me. On a superbly vivid Indiana Jones-themed simulator Lucy asked me “Daddy, how are we going to get out of this?” at about the point where I was wondering the same thing. Politically, I answered a slightly different question. “Yes, of course we ’ll get out of this,” at which point she settled back — though did not let go of my hand — and shrieked with pleasure.

Midnight, and the sky exploded with fireworks over the lake. Lucy, hands clapped over her ears, was scared but captivated. As we walked to the car we broke the news that we were flying home the next day. “Don’t worry,” my wife said, “when Daddy’s earned some money we can go on holiday again.”

A new park, Terra Natura (902 500 414, www.terranatura.com), based on the design of Disney’s Animal Kingdom in Florida, is due to open in Benidorm this month.

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