Monte da Quinta Club - Almancil, Portugal 

We are a 40 year old couple with 2 small children (3 year old and 9 months) and have recently returned from 6 days at Monte da Quinta Club (MQ). The club is in Quinto da Lago - the most upmarket area of the Algarve: a bit like Wentworth in the UK - lots of golf courses and luxury houses (?2m plus). MQ is a small 'village resort' with 2 & 3 bed townhouses and larger villas. All have their own garden, pool or plunge pool and are incredibly well kept. There is also a new suite-only hotel on the site which has 123 x 1 and 2 bed suites. There are two pools (plus 2 small kids pools and an indoor one) and 2 kids clubs, a small shop, spa and a couple of restaurants. It's a 2 min drive/15 min walk to a lovely beach (even though it's on the flightpath to Faro so planes landing every 5 mins) and nature reserve - again, both beautifully maintained. It's a 5-min drive to a shopping area where there are 4 or 5 restaurants and boutiques - all geared to the British - and a supermarket. We were looking for a relaxing break, with guaranteed sun, self-catering 'luxury' accommodation, and good quality child care for under 3's, and avoiding the tacky resorts. MQ met this brief perfectly. We stayed in a 2-bed townhouse which was large, very very well-equipped and very very clean. The decor is not 'designer' but it's good. The hotel suites are much more contemporary. Our 3-year old was in the kids club for 3 hours/day and the baby had a 'nanny' in the baby room off the club for the same timings. There are 2 clubs - one for under 3s and one for over 3s. They are each just one room but are very well equipped and clean and there's plenty of staff, who couldn't be faulted. My two were very happy there. All staff on site seemed to be Portuguese and the service level was very high - they couldn't do enough for you. Fellow holidaymakers were mostly Irish and British (Quinto da Lago is owned by an Irish Family), although there were a fair few Portuguese as well. June is a perfect time to visit with small kids - temp was 25-30 and the place was very quiet. My only criticism would be that Quinto da Lago overall has a very un-Portuguese feel to it so you could be anywhere in the world! Although you can walk to the beach (it's just over 1km) there's nowhere else to walk to: no main towns or villages - we hired bikes as we wanted to relax and cycled to the local supermarket etc, but most people would need a car. It's always difficult to decide where to go with two small kids - but we were very happy with MQ and really felt like we had had a holiday - I would recommend it if you have small children and want to use a kids club, and aren't looking for wild nightlife! It's also good value if you compare it to some of the 5* hotels which offer 'rooms with kitchenettes' and have childcare on site. I ended up booking the villa with Design Holidays as they were 10% cheaper than booking with MQ direct. We flew Easyjet.

We are all very quick to criticise when things go wrong so I just thought I would pen a very positive holiday note. This is now the 3rd time we have been to Monte da Quinta and have to say that the large villas with pools are perhaps the most luxurious in the Algarve. This time though we tried the new Monte da Quinta Suites (which is the new area of the resort) and booked with Design Holidays who had an exclusive 50% discount , we paid ?99 per night for 5 star luxury - we will return !!!! Great restaurants locally include the Bobby Jones Bar & Grill, D' Lounge / Tarantino's along with Gi Gi's on the Quinta do Lago Lagoon. The Hotel Quinta do Lago for pre dinner drinks was fabulous - amazing views of the Lagoon nature reserve.