by Kate Edgley

Kate Edgely and family swapped their terrace in Brighton for a villa with pool in Cyprus – and it cost them just £95.

It was the purchase of a large three ‘bedroom’ frame tent – floral curtains and all – after the arrival of our second child, that made me realise we had subconsciously signed up to the ‘camping holidays are for life’ philosophy.

This was, in fact, our fourth new tent – each bigger and better than the last – as we gradually resigned ourselves to our holidaying fate. But, like any big moment, the £500 outlay left me with cold feet and the realisation that I could not forever be committed to canvas.

This year, despite lacking the requisite suitcase-load of dosh the annual school holiday getaway usually costs, we stayed in a large four bedroom, three bathroom villa, with air-conditioning and a swimming pool, overlooking the Mediterranean, in Cyprus. For this accommodation we paid £95, the fee for joining HomeLink, a house-swap company.

As I perused its website – with 13000 members, it claims to be the largest home-exchange company – I felt the world opening up to me. But firing off emails to exotic hot spots, offering up our modest three-bedroom terrace in Brighton, yielded little.

We did have some offers: Ghent, which I knew was a no-hoper: and somewhere or other in northern Italy with summer skiing. Not a compelling offer with a 17 month-old on board. We were on the point of resigning ourselves to resuming the French camping routine when we had the offer from Cyprus: a family who used to live in Brighton and wanted to visit friends and family. By extraordinary coincidence the mother and son used to go to the same toddler group as my daughter Sophie and I realised we knew them, albeit vaguely.

This gave solace to relatives who were concerned that our exchange family would copy our keys and via a complex network or criminal, burgle us six months later, although I hadn’t felt troubled about strangers staying in our house. I couldn’t imagine that people who were inviting strangers into their home would not respect the property of those same strangers.

Of more concern to me was how deranged I would become getting our house into order before we left. Stress-wise this proved comparable to the preparations prior to camping: the difference is, I’m still benefiting from the effects of the much-needed cleaning operations. We could only fret, however, about half-built cupboards, a bath tap that turns and turns, and the cutlery tray in the dishwasher with holes in the bottom.

The upside of the departure was packing a single large suitcase for the whole family. Not only were we spared lugging our home, a kitchen, beds and bedding away with us, but toys – which can take up as much room as all the aforementioned – also remained behind because they can be swapped too.

Camping holidays mean driving, so I haven’t been on a plane in years and despite the amused response of friends with small children when I told them, I had been particularly excited about the flight. I understood the joke but failed to see the funny side after a 60 minute delay and a four-hour flight with a tetchy toddler on my lap, aboard an airline that had forgotten our vegetarian meals and run out of drinking water.

But after a 40 minute drive to Pegeia, north of Paphos, my mood received a tonic the moment we stepped into our cool, spacious villa. One of the biggest bonuses of house swapping was immediately apparent. We had a whole house comprising an expansive kitchen/diner/lounge with three sets of patio doors overlooking the pool and garden, and enough bedrooms to play the musical beds game usually precluded when we stay away from home.

We ran from room to room, hardly daring to believe our luck, at the same time grappling with a sense of inadequacy at the thought of the three-bedroom terrace we’d swapped it for. Sophie immediately laid claim to the child’s bedroom, seduced by an abundance of teddies and toys.

Minutes after arriving we jumped into the pool and the last vestiges of a frazzled journey dissolved.

The pool, with attendant inflatable crocodiles, car and ball, was of course the last word in home entertainment. Into the bargain came buckets, spades and other accessories for the beach, a 10-minute drive away, a crate of indoor toys, shelf-loads of children’s books and enough kids’ videos for a fortnight in front of the box.

One of the most comforting things about the house was that it was clearly ‘lived in’. Everything was clean and tidy, but not obsessively so. The sofas weren’t terrifyingly new, the TV was positively ancient and the kettle was reassuringly furred up. And there were no trinkets for our kids to break.

HomeLink’s blurb states that the most common cause of disputes concerns differing standards of cleanliness. Embarking on this type of holiday means understanding that you are not expected to make your house look as pristine as a hotel; nor can you expect as much from the one you are staying in.

There is a certain fascination about staying in someone else’s house – piecing their lives together from their choice of books, cards and notes left unguardedly out, the food in their cupboards, the pattern on the bedding. Naturally, they’ll be doing the same in your house.

Of course we had our mishaps: the most Laurel and Hardy-esque was washing a weed-upon duvet, which ended up being blown into the pool by a sudden gust, taking the clothes horse with it. A sequence of proverbial fine messes followed as we tried to handle a sodden and therefore unmanageably heavy, item.

Toby broke a child’s plate; my husband Graham and I scoffed two bags of chocolate-covered almonds we found in the fridge, wrongly assuming we’d be able to buy replacements from the local supermarket, then the toaster sparked and expired mid-toasting.

We had, on the face of it, landed a plum exchange. Like most of the world’s population, the majority of HomeLink’s members live in suburbia, so to have scored with a Mediterranean resort seemed very lucky. And yet, though it seems churlish, Cyprus was in some ways a disappointment. Even though we were the opposite end of the island to Ayia Napa and its nightclubs, the extent of the development along the coastline – in the Greek-controlled south at least – is an eyesore, as concrete boxes rammed into the crumbling hillside infiltrate further and further inland. And it’s certainly not a place to go to if you want to get away from the British.

Even the beaches are not especially lovely when compared to Greek island standards. Coral Bay, our nearest, was said to be one of the nicest but in August, with almost every inch of it covered in basking bodies, it wasn’t hugely inviting, although we did have some of our most peaceful times there thanks to the acres of chocolate-brown sand which Sophie and Toby happily dug, built with and buried parts of themselves and each other in for hours.

Latsi beach, near Polis, on the north-west coast but no quite in Turkish-controlled territory, was the calmest and most pleasant, except that its pebbles offered only limited entertainment to the younger contingent.

Real Cyprus – charming villages, Byzantine churches – was a two-hour drive away, in the Troodos Mountains. In Platres we sat in the tree-shaded cool outside the Psilo Dhendhro restaurant before walking two kilometres – unthinkable in the heat at sea level – criss-crossing, to Sophie’s delight, a river to the Kaledonia Falls.

We also had our first family venture to a theme park, Aphrodite water park in Paphos. The expense, crowds and queues were in equally monstrous proportions but Sophie had a great day, and one of the highlights of the whole trip for me was bobbing around the Slow River lying across a huge rubber ring with Toby asleep on top of me.

Relaxation is a sparse commodity on holidays with small children, but we did come home revitalised. We returned to a warm note from our exchange partners, listing a few worries, - wing mirror broken off toy car, wallpaper tone in bedroom which they weren’t sure was there before of not (nor was I), and phone used because their mobiles hadn’t worked in the house. Nothing to dent our faith in the exchange.

In bagging a large house with a pool by the sea, we were very lucky with our debut swap. And we couldn’t hope for an arrangement with people we knew again – not via a company at any rate. But we will definitely give it another go. And perhaps we’ll save camping just for weekends. Though I think we could do with a slightly smaller tent.