I left parenting duties behind for a mums’ trip to Turkey – it was liberating

Loll and I have not been abroad together in a decade. Palermo, Lisbon, Rome, Ibiza in our thirties, then children – and Covid – happened and the furthest we managed was Margate. Margate is lovely, but it’s not Lisbon. So four nights on the Turkish Aegean, without children or partners, felt significant. The plan: fly to Dalaman, check in, do nothing. A total escape from responsibility; a brief escape from young children, ageing parents, partners, work. We nearly didn’t make it on to the plane. Not because of traffic or security queues, but because we sat down, started properly talking and became so consumed by our forensic accounting of the invisible labour we each perform daily that we failed to notice we were waiting by the wrong gate. We had three minutes before ours closed. We ran, only just making it. Shorts Our destination was Hillside Beach Club, a resort on a private bay near Fethiye just over an hour’s drive from Dalaman Airport. The steep hills that encircle it drop through pine, olive and oleander to water an implausible shade of greenish turquoise — the kind of colour that comes from a shallow, transparent sea surrounded by forest. No other buildings are visible from the beach, no roads, no evidence of the outside world and its demands. The temperature in May, hovering in the mid-20°Cs, was ideal: warm enough to lie in the sun without suffering, pleasantly cool after sunset. It’s a similar scene in early autumn, too. No mosquitoes, no jellyfish, no irritants of any kind. When you lie back in that pale jade sea and stare at the sky, something resets. The only decisions required all week were beach or pool, and which of the daily activity options to ignore. The programme was extensive, offering classes and activities including yoga, candle-making, drink-and-draw. Mostly, we chose our own activity: drink-and-lie-down. Yoga at 8am is the perfect way to start the day (Photo: Hillside Beach Club Turkey) One exception was an 8am yoga class, which took place on a wooden deck. We lay on our backs looking up through pine trees while the sea lapped a few feet away. Not exercise so much as a daily reminder that your body is capable of existing without being useful to anyone. We also mustered the energy to visit the spa. The massage menu runs to Balinese, feathery, four-handed and beyond, in a beautiful teak-and-timber space that smells of lavender and good intentions. I opted for deep tissue. The therapist was so thorough that I — a person with a reasonable threshold for this sort of thing — asked her to ease up. I felt looser and lighter than I had in years as I floated back to the beach. Hillside is notably, pleasingly tasteful. This sounds like faint praise; it isn’t. We were visiting without kids, but this is a place that caters for families very thoughtfully. Anyone who has taken children to a resort hotel knows the trade-off that usually entails — brash colours, unbreakable crockery, the sense that beauty has been sacrificed on the altar of the kids’ club. Here, neither has been compromised: sun loungers in pleasing neutrals, parasols in simple wicker, bathrooms tiled in calm greens and natural shades. The main restaurant has enormous rattan lampshades, warm tones and vast trailing plants. All of it adds up to an ease that feels effortless, the hardest thing to pull off. The lush setting of the Hillside Beach Club (Photo: Hillside Beach Club Turkey) The buffet must be seen to be believed, the spread so vast it induced a daily paralysis. It includes a 10 -variety salt bar (smoked, chilli, Greek, Italian, pink and five I failed to document), a butter selection to rival the salt, two bread counters, a sushi station, a tomato-and-burrata bar, separate from the Turkish dip section. Approximately 30 salads. Dinner at Pasha, the à la carte restaurant on the curve of the crystalline bay, began with spicy Turkish margaritas and moved through silky carpaccio, sea bass ceviche, something with aubergine that disappeared before I could properly assess it, then morels in cream with asparagus, crispy calamari, a truffled mushroom risotto that was one of the best things I ate all week, and perfectly pink lamb chops with tiny buttery baked potatoes. Every day we walked a rocky path bordered with rosemary and wildflowers, canopied by pines, to Serenity Beach, the adults-only bay 632 metres away, a distance some guests consider sufficient reason to take the boat. We ordered Aperol spritzes the moment we arrived, at which point the sun went behind a cloud. The spritzes cost £20 each, we discovered afterwards. Worth it, we decided. Wandering back to the main beach, a DJ was playing Euro house at a deafening volume to a crowd of glamorous, bopping wine mums around the bar. We sat down and observed with the detached appreciation of women who had chosen the drink-and-lie-down option every single day and were at peace with that decision. Taking in the views (Photo: Hillside Beach Club Turkey) The resort runs largely Turkish at this time of year — CEOs and their families on holiday, according to the PR we met one evening, which explains the 30 yachts moored to the left of the bay, small children careering around them on jet skis with unnerving competence. There was a daily fashion parade of complicated jewelled sandals, wafty white linen, beautiful teenage girls with waist-length hair, clad in crochet beachwear. On the penultimate afternoon, after a morning reading on the beach and another lunch of grilled fish and cold beer, we made a decision that I can only attribute to temporary insanity brought on by excessive relaxation: we went on the doughnut. This inflatable ring towed at speed behind a motorboat is marketed as fun. I was keen. Loll was cautiously interested, in the way that you are about things you used to enjoy at 18 without stopping to consider that you are now 46. When the instructor asked whether we wanted to fall in, I said yes and Loll said no, and he nodded. He said it would last six minutes. We both thought that sounded quite short. It was an eternity of pure, undiluted physical endurance — gripping the handles, bracing against the turns, bashing into each other on the corners, thinking intermittently about my back and all the good work now being rapidly undone. Time to unwind (Photo: Hillside Beach Club Turkey) Afterwards, we agreed it would be our last ever doughnut. We went and lay on the beach in a state of mild trauma and ordered Aperol spritzes. Loll could barely lift hers. When those were finished, we ordered Amaretto sours, because we had by that point worked our way through most of the menu and needed something new. We flew home the next morning, back to the children, the partners, the parents and the to-do lists. Somewhere between the Amaretto sours and the departure gate, I realised that the best thing about those four days wasn’t the truffled risotto or the jade sea or the massage. It was the hours of lazy, unhurried, unfiltered conversation — the kind you can only have when there are no small children scrambling on to your lap, and no work deadlines looming. A decade between trips is too long. We’ve already decided on two years, maximum. And absolutely no doughnuts. How to get there Dalaman is served from the UK by British Airways, SunExpress, easyJet, Jet2, Wizz Air, Ryanair and Tui. Where to stay Nightly rates at Hillside Beach Club start from £176 full board, hillsidebeachclub.com/en More information goturkiye.com