We came in search of paradise

There are, in fact, no people of Turkish extraction (nor, indeed, many cakes) on the Turks and Caicos Islands. When first discovered by Europeans around 1500 (whether by Columbus or Ponce de Leon, nobody is sure), the islands were named after the fez-shaped "Turk's Head" cactus that grows in abundance, and after the local phrase caya hico, meaning "chain of islands".

There are, in fact, no people of Turkish extraction (nor, indeed, many cakes) on the Turks and Caicos Islands. When first discovered by Europeans around 1500 (whether by Columbus or Ponce de Leon, nobody is sure), the islands were named after the fez-shaped "Turk's Head" cactus that grows in abundance, and after the local phrase caya hico, meaning "chain of islands".

It's hard to think of this elegant section of the Caribbean as an archipelago of spikes. The pictures you see in brochures are studies of beautiful simplicity - sand, sea and sky as three layers in an abstract painting. They take the classic Caribbean dreamscape that's lodged at the back of your mind (an amalgam of coral reefs, vertiginous cliffs, 18th-century pirate chic, Anglo-colonial furniture, palm trees, calypso, land crabs and rum punch) and reduce it to its purest essence of elemental, beautiful nothingness - the flat strand and massive sky, just as Columbus (or Ponce) must have found them.

The Turks and Caicos Islands seem a little more authentically Caribbean, a bit more insular than, say, St Lucia or Barbados. The islanders refer to themselves as "the belongers". Traders from Bermuda settled on Grand Turk, Salt Cay and South Caicos in the 17th century. British soldiers, in flight from the American Revolution, fetched up there a century later. Both sets of visitors, in their charmless way, made slaves of the locals. The islands were owned, in listless succession, by Spanish, French and British governments, ruled by the Bahamas, then Jamaica, then the Bahamas again. Now they're a British Dependent Territory, a 48-island chunk of Blighty. The Queen is head of state; the Governor is an Englishman who lives in style on Grand Turk; the islands' religion is Anglicanism; and, like the Caymans, it's a tax haven for enterprising capitalists.

I'd heard about Parrot Cay, the super-glamorous private island of which Bruce Willis and Paul McCartney have bought several acres, and where the unwashed cannot set foot unless they know someone unbelievably famous. But I wanted to visit the islands for non-celebrity reasons - for the iguanas, the dolphins, the conches, the parrots in the trees, the snorkelling, and the warm, velvety Caribbean nights. So, when British Airways Holidays unveiled its new brochure, revealing two-stop flights to Nassau and Providenciales (the most developed island), I jumped at it and decided to celebrate my 50th birthday there with my family - one consort (Carolyn) and three children (Sophie, 16, Max, 12, and Clementine, eight). Would they survive the journey, the heat, the food, and Caribbean life in general?

First, there's the flight to endure, all 12 and a half hours of it. Possibly from simple nostalgia, BA takes you on this mammoth journey in one of its ancient 767s. The leg-room is minimal, and the movie is screened on terrible old Bakelite TV sets, hanging in the aisles, that are always either a) just above your head and give you neckache, or b) 20 yards away and give you eye-strain if you have no opera glasses handy. Anticipating that boredom would set in among the offspring, we invested in magazines, magic-trick compendia, Travel Scrabble, improving books, you name it. The cabin crew (unflaggingly helpful and charming) supplemented them with packs of puzzles and colouring-books.

Despite these and the minor thrills of lunch at 10.30am, there were epic sighs and groans of "Are we nearly there yet?" for a few stressful hours - but once we hit the Bahamas, and the searing heat blew through the open door as the plane stood on the melting Nassau Tarmac - a tropical excitement seized us all.

On Providenciales, we transferred to the Beaches resort, to be met at the entrance with cold towels and fruity cocktails (the children decided that they could quickly get used to such treatment). The Beaches resorts are, of course, owned by the Sandals hotel chain, and want to be the numero uno resort destination for families. This resort was very child-friendly. There's a Pirate's Island pool with elephant's-trunk slides to beguile the tinies, a video-games room, a pool-and-ping-pong room, basketball and tennis courts for the sulky teens, and on the beach there's windsurfing, paragliding and a banana-boat to which a dozen children can cling for dear life as it courses through the waves.

Like other resorts in this popular but slightly schlocky chain, Beaches offers punters "all-inclusive" fare, so all of your meals and drinks are paid for in advance. For the tight-arsed British visitor, this is a heady concept. Ten restaurants, from the posh, Oriental-themed Kimono to the more gutsy Tex-Mexy Arizona, where you eat whatever you fancy, with wine, night after night, for no extra charge. Litre bottles of Canadian Club Scotch, Tanqueray gin, Appleton rum and Absolut vodka above your minibar, likewise gratis. This should, by rights, be a toper's paradise, but, amazingly, they report little drunken revelry. "The family atmosphere kinda militates against it," says Jeremy Jones, the resort's general manager. "You can rely on wives to tell the husbands it's not good for them to be falling over in front of the children."

The main selling point of the resort, however, is the beach. The hotel complex extends along (but is concealed from) half a mile of Grace Bay, the most beautiful beach in the world. There surely can't be much dispute about this. Never was sand so creamy white, so pure and pristine, so smooth and custardy (it's actually the exact colour of putty, off-putting though such accuracy may be). Never was the sea so gorgeously translucent, the lightest turquoise you can imagine. There's something cool and refreshing about the colour, a hint of Fox's Glacier Mints or Listerine mouthwash - even though the actual water lapping around your knees is amniotically warm - and there's 12 miles of it, stretching endlessly before and behind you. The best way to appreciate it is to go paragliding: sitting in a harness clipped to a vast, billowing purple parachute, which is then winched away from a boat in mid-ocean until you're 300ft up, whooping with delight and chatting with your lady friend in the next-door harness.

The days slide into each other. Buffet breakfast, game of snooker, read Victorian classic beside the Cascades Pool, swim, bask in 42C sun, swim to swim-up bar and toy with pina colada or banana daiquiri ("You want rum in that?" the barman asks, disconcertingly - lots of the available cocktails are alcohol-free), swim, spot of lunch, snooze, walk down beach, swim, crash out with Victorian classic, refuse to have hair braided by importunate locals. Every evening, on the way to try another restaurant, you pass a hi-fi speaker discreetly got up as a white rock in the shrubbery. It's disconcerting to listen to a stone singing "I Know Him By Heart" in Eva Cassidy's voice, but you get used to it as a bit of resort kitsch.

Gradually, you realise that you're not really a resort kinda person. The endless passaggiata of vast American men and women and their (mostly solitary) offspring ambling up and down the resort's walkways has turned you into a fastidious élitist. You do not want to join in the games of volleyball in the Iguana Pool. You are a little hacked off because, last night, you booked into the fanciest restaurant and were turned away because they wouldn't take the children. So you decide to explore the island, to investigate the secret, beating heart of Providenciales, to find, as it were, the G-spot of the Ts and Cs.

You hire a taxi to show you the island's high-points for a couple of hours. There aren't many. In Turtle Cove, there's Tiki Hut restaurant, where everyone goes on Wednesday evenings for the $10-a-head ribs'n'vegetables special supper with a bucket of President beer. There's a shopping centre called Ports of Call, which is fine providing you're looking for souvenir T-shirts or snorkelling equipment. In the Blue Hills district, where all the houses are set back from the seafront because of the threat from hurricanes, you pass churches and schools, building works and cemeteries, Myrtle's Corner Store and a revivalist temple called the Centre of Love and Hope (outside which stands a sinister man with a machete and dark glasses). There's a lot of abandoned cars and rubble everywhere and hopeless little shacks, though one of them, the Bugaloo Bar, is wonderful. It's on the seafront and serves conch fritters, conch salad, conch à la bonne femme, conch thermidor, you name it. The conch (pronounced conk) is the island's staple diet. You've seen the beautiful pink-and-orange horned shells on a thousand suburban British mantelpieces, but you may not have tasted the huge, rather gross, ox-tongue-shaped white shellfish that lives inside and tastes of rubber bands.

Otherwise, Providenciales is disappointing. The land is flat and scrubby, the main Leeward Highway and its side-roads are atrociously pitted, potholed and flooded, and the downtown district is an unlovely wasteland of half-built private houses, incongruous office complexes, and signs advertising the flourishing professions of law and real estate. Ask the driver to show you the most majestic sight on the island, and he'll take you to Silly Creek, to show you the $2m houses being built there, with their porticoes and stained glass and names like Xanadu. "Didn't use to be anythin' around here when I came from Jamaica in '94," muses Tommy, the driver, not wholly approvingly.

You can book on to one of the sea cruises run at the resort by Dolphin Tours and Excursions: glass-bottom boat tours, visits to Little Water Cay to see the perky rock iguanas, fishing for marlin and barracuda. We went on a conch cruise, on which, kitted out in snorkelling gear, you hurl yourself (and children) over the side, and try to swim down 30 feet to secure a conch and bring it to the boat, where the captain will convert it into a tasty lunch. It was expensive ($60 a head) but fun. The main revelation, though, was strolling on one of the 40 uninhabited islands, marvelling at the flat beach, the perfect water, the massive sky and the feeling of being as far removed from civilisation as you'll ever be. Soon, you're back in the Beaches complex, heading for the pool, the beach, the buffet, the health and massage spa (I can recommend the facial devised for "urban skin") and the tiny reef where you can take pictures of fire coral but aren't allowed to swim over it.

The Turks and Caicos experience offers a Caribbean holiday that's relaxing and energetic, sybaritic and strenuous by turns, but offers the adventurous traveller little outside the environs of the resort. You come looking for parrots in the trees and vivid local craziness. What you'll most remember is the singing rock you pass on the way to dinner.

TRAVELLER'S GUIDE

Getting there: British Airways Holidays (0870 24 33 406; www.ba.com/beaches) offers seven nights at the four-star all-inclusive Beaches Turks and Caicos Resort and Spa from £1,585 per person for departures from 1 January to 4 February 2004. The price includes return scheduled flights on British Airways from Heathrow, all-inclusive accommodation and transfers. Free UK connecting flights are also included from most regional airports.

Information: Turks and Caicos tourist office: 020-8350 1017; www.turksandcaicostourism.com

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