As our speedboat landed at the wooden jetty, two butlers clad in blinding-white shirts and khaki shorts shimmered amidships bearing pinkish-orange iced punches and rolled hot flannels.

Four golden labrador puppies padded in their wake, all bumbling blonde paws and pink tongues.

“Welcome to Fowl Cay,” said Way-land and Orlando, looking genuinely pleased to see us (always a bonus when travelling en famille, I find).

“Just leave your bags and freshen up, don’t worry about a thing,” they said as we clambered out of the boat, with its cream-leather trim, and stood on the dock of the bay, gazing around at our destination – an emerald-green desert island, dotted with a few villas, fringed by white-sand beaches and a sea in a palette of so many improbable shades of blue, from gemstone pale turquoise to electric indigo, even Picasso would have had to dig deep to reflect them all. “It’s all taken care of.”

Ten private island hotel hideaways

Lots of resorts can offer luxury. Seclusion's harder to find. To get both, you want a hotel on its own private island, says Susan d'Arcy

• Ten sexy eco breaks

• On the up in the Seychelles

The A-listers' guide to luxury holidays

Paul Croughton finds the best tour operators for a blow out break and gets to the nitty gritty of the bill

• The 13 hottest hotels for winter sun

• A new era in first class travel

• What do you get for a £12k a week Oz resort?

Kenya's hottest holiday isle

Less edgy than Zanzibar, the island of Lamu is a true Indian Ocean idyll, says Jill Crawshaw

• Kenya's secret paradise island

The Seychelles in a family guesthouse

Forget the characterless five-star resort and try one of a new collection of family-run guesthouses

IT HAD BEEN a long journey to our island in the sun in the Exumas, part of the Bahamian chain of islands – 10 hours to Nassau, a 45-minute air transfer in a Cessna to Staniel Cay, followed by a 25-minute boat ride – but immediately I knew it was worth it. Finally, sunshine.

The children had actually borne the long, rainy English summer – all eight weeks, five days, 17 hours and 57 minutes of it – reasonably well. I’d only found my daughter in tears once, after she’d logged onto Facebook and pored over pictures of sun-kissed, bikini-clad friends that they’d helpfully posted of themselves in exotic parts of the world.

After all, as we’d explained to them, family holidays abroad were jolly expensive, and flying was bad for the environment. We had a lovely farmhouse on Exmoor of our own, so they were jolly lucky, and they didn’t know they were born and all that. Yes, we’d explained it all last summer, while, whenever we were out of earshot of our offspring, privately wondering whether to abandon ship and fly off to the destination called Somewhere Hot.

Then came the call offering us a week in the Bahamas at half-term – and I was thrown into a dilemma. After all my lectures about the joys of staying put, knitting their own anoraks out of dog hair, picking blackberries in the rain and long games of Monopoly, I could see the elephant trap. If I took them to the Bahamas, on a long-haul flight, on a luxury holiday, I would be rendered a complete hypocrite.

“Mum,” my daughter said, after I’d laid all this out. “If we don’t go to the Bahamas, I will never talk to you again. In fact, I will kill you. I don’t want to hear about carbon emissions or the boring credit crunch. I need tan lines. Okay?”

So, it was decided. We would ruin for ever the children’s ability to tolerate normal, averagely rubbish family holidays.

REFRESHED, we smugly replaced our empty glasses on the tray. We hopped into golf buggies and soon found our villa (one of six) on the north beach, with huge white bedrooms, a chef’s kitchen, a porch with a swing chair and french windows leading out to ... the Caribbean. Out of every window, the fierce-blue sea seemed to beckon, so we quickly stripped off our autumnal layers, put swimming costumes on our doughy white bodies, starved of vitamin D for many months, and flung ourselves into the warm water.

“Are you glad we came?” I asked, as I noted a dark shape in the water languidly pulsing towards us. It was a stingray. A vast one, with a 6ft wingspan. I stayed very still. At least it wasn’t a shark. Then I remembered. It was one of these jobbies that did for Steve Irwin.

Times recommends

• Oasis of the Seas: the Times review
• The 20 best new year party places to stay
• Green Spaces 2009: are you the winning writer?