Relationships Summer Loving: My sexy souvenir

The holidays are over. But what if you've met someone special? Three women describe what happened to them - and Katy Guest, below, weighs up the chances of love lasting

Going on holiday can be dangerous. Not only is there a risk of heatstroke, Spanish tummy and ouzo blindness, but scientists say that the effect of sunshine on our pineal glands makes us far more likely to jump into bed. Add to that our beer goggles and the well-known effect on the British of naked flesh with a once-a-year tan and it is no wonder that 46 per cent of men and 53 per cent of women say they have had a holiday romance. So will you be coming back from the beach this summer with a promise and an application for a Turkish visa, or just peeling skin and a broken heart?

Here, our etiquette guide will steer you through the shallow end of holiday dating, and, opposite, you can learn from people who really know.

Your eyes meet

A Durex summer survey found that 42 per cent of men and 30 per cent of women have gone on holiday hoping to find the girl or boy of their dreams. They may be disappointed: in the same survey, 45 per cent of men and 14 per cent of women admitted they are only there for casual sex. This latter group should heed the advice of the website trashed.co.uk, which provides a handy phrase book. "¿Qué sabor de condón prefiere usted ?", for example, is Spanish for "Which flavour of condom would you like?"

Preparation

Paris and Venice are the most romantic places to go for a summer fling, according to a survey by Tesco. But if your romance is likely to be more banana boat than gondola, expert advice is to pack two watches. Not in case one gets nicked by an enterprising gigolo, but so you remember when to take your contraceptive pill. "It is particularly difficult to keep track of pill-taking [in] completely different time zones," says the eminently sensible Rough Guide. "The easiest way around this is to have two watches, one set at home time".

Afterwards

To assess your chances of lasting happiness, find out which newspaper your lover reads and where he or she is from. An impressive 42 per cent of Daily Star respondents said that they habitually squeeze three or more flings into one short holiday (an avant garde interpretation of "efficient packing"), while 20 per cent of Observer readers, meanwhile, said that a holiday fling had become long term. A Foreign Office survey found that young travellers from the North-west were looking for excessive drinking, Londoners a one-night stand and East Anglians a fight.

Back at home

In the Durex survey, 52 per cent said they have kept in touch with their holiday romance after the tans have faded. Charming, but watch for warning signs. When she asks for your number, does she mean the one on your credit card? The website baliblog .com warns of "Kuta Cowboys" who hang around beaches looking for foreign women who they can coax into sending money. Email, learn a language, but remember, cultural exchange can go a bit too far.

WEDDING BELLS: 'In Goa it was like a date every day'

Emma Beeny, 37, and her husband Robert, 30, live in Ely. They have a one-year-old son.

By Julia Stuart

We met five years ago in Goa. I was on holiday with a friend, and Rob was at the same hotel. I'd spotted him having breakfast with a woman I assumed was his girlfriend but he would sit on his own most evenings at the pool bar. One evening we went to a bar and he was there with a group including his girlfriend, but she wasn't near him. We got talking and he explained that they had fallen out, split up and weren't speaking. I invited him to spend his time with us.

He spent his days and evenings with us after that. It was obvious there was an attraction - I'd fancied him from the start. He would join us for dinner, then my friend would go back to our room while we stayed out drinking, playing pool and talking. Every morning we would swim together. It was very romantic - completely different from what I would do in England, like going on a date every day.

A couple of days before we went home, before we went our separate ways to our rooms, I asked him whether it was just a holiday romance. He said "I hope not" and we had our first kiss. I gave him my number twice to keep in different places so he couldn't lose it. He promised to call the day he got back, and he did! I knew that would be the crux of it.

He lived in Woking, Surrey and I lived 100 miles away in Ely, Cambridgeshire. We arranged to meet half way, in St Albans, on a work night. It was different being back in England in the cold light of day - I was wearing a business suit rather than a bikini - and we were both embarrassed. He was more guarded than on holiday and I had some reservations. But after a couple of drinks and some food it was just like before. We spent the night together in the hotel.

From then on we saw each other every weekend for a couple of years, then he moved in with me. We got married two years ago. Our son, Joseph, was born nine months later and our second child is due in October. We're as strong as ever now.

Meeting each other was destiny. We only chose that hotel because it looked like it had a sunny terrace. We haven't been back to Goa, but we will when the children are older. I'd definitely recommend a holiday romance.

'After a lot of toads I found my prince'

Jules Grass, 38, met Patricio Giner Esteve, 30, on holiday in Spain three and a half years ago.

Alice Douglas

The first four days of my relationship with Patricio I hardly remember because I was so drunk. It was April 2003 and I was on holiday with a friend in La Manga. We went to Calpe for the day. That evening we went to a bar. My career at that time meant I was living and breathing stress and work, so as soon as I had the chance I let my hair down. I'd been running a successful model agency, which should have been a dream life, but in reality it was more grind than glitter.

I was looking at Patricio through tequila goggles - 17 of them, and I thought he was cute. I called him Mauricio and about a week later he said, "Darling my name is Patricio". This sounds like a recipe for disaster but I was lucky. After a track record of kissing toads who remained toads, at last I got my prince. It was completely different with him and felt special almost immediately. He couldn't do enough for me; I felt pampered and looked after, which was just what I needed, and it didn't cross my mind that I was miles from home.

I was supposed to go back to London a week later, but I never did. First it was going to be for a month, then for the rest of the summer and now it's been over three years. Suddenly I had time and space for a relationship to grow - an impossibility in my frenetic, London life.

The first winter, once all the tourists had gone, was tough. The house would be full of Patricio's friends all laughing and speaking in a language I couldn't follow. I'd sit at the dinner table and end up talking to myself in my head. I'd got a job as a chambermaid with uniform, trolley the works.

There were misunderstandings owing to language difficulties primarily. Early on I bought a dog and we were discussing whether to get it spayed. I said she should be allowed to have puppies and I mistakenly thought that Patricio disagreed. I ran sobbing to the beach thinking, what am I doing? I craved my friends and family and a lifestyle that was familiar. But then I looked at the beauty all around me and realised how lucky I was. We hardly ever argue. When I'm stroppy Patricio ignores me and it all blows over.

Patricio was running a bar when I met him and now we are about to open one together: it's up in the hills behind Calpe in a place called Vennis - Bar Alta Mira (high view). It's incredibly hard work but has just the right mix of the physical, imaginative and intellectual to it. It's a dream because I'm doing it with someone I love and I look out of the window and there are the Spanish hills. Sundays are now my happiest days - not my loneliest, as they were when I had a high-flying career but was unhappy in love.

DISASTER: 'He took my money then dumped me'

By Julia Stuart

Rosemary Worsley, 49, an unemployed legal secretary, lives in Greater Manchester.

In September 2003 I went on holiday to Marmaris, Turkey. I'd been divorced twice, and was happy to go on my own. I met Marco while I was looking at jewellery in the window of the shop he worked in. He was intelligent, spoke five languages and was quite good looking. He asked me out for a drink and a meal and I thought "why not?"

He stopped going to work and spent the next 10 days with me. I wasn't looking for romance, but it quickly became intense. I was 46 and he was 42. He said he was widowed and that his wife and four-year-old daughter had died in a traffic accident.

I knew long-distance romances don't work and I wasn't keen on taking it further when I got back to Britain. But he phoned a few times, was very romantic and pushed all the right buttons. He asked me to come back for his birthday the following month. We had a lovely three weeks and drove around seeing lots of places and he proposed. My feelings had grown a lot deeper - I was probably in love with him - and I warmed to the idea. He wanted us to open a jewellery shop. I thought it was a good idea so I borrowed £25,000 from my mother and brother and re-mortgaged my house twice. In all I sent him £100,000.

I began to divide my time between home and Turkey, and flew over about 24 times. While I was in England I temped. On one trip he took me to what he said was our jewellery shop and showed me a business licence in Turkish with my name on it.

Things changed last year. I went out for six weeks and he was very distant. I went again in December and it was the same. He's never had a house, so we were moving from hotel to hotel and he kept going off. There was always a plausible explanation, it was always to do with his deals. And when I did see him he was different. He never turned nasty, just distant. But I was in so deep I felt that there was nothing I could do about it - I was dependent on him and his family by that time. I didn't have the money to come home and I had burnt all my bridges in England.

He abandoned me in March. He just never came back and changed his phone number. The hotel kept my passport for six weeks because I couldn't pay the bill. I'm a reiki master and the Shamballa Healing Foundation gave me money to pay the hotel and fly home.

I later found out that he had been married three times and divorced twice - his last wedding was in 2003 just before he met me. At one stage he'd even introduced his wife to me saying she was his sister-in-law. I think the jewellery shop was just somewhere he worked and the business licence was a fake. I never got any money back. His brother told me he had gone on the run as he owed so much.

It has left me traumatised and it's a challenge to rebuild my life. I've still got debts because of him and will probably have to declare myself a bankrupt. I would never consider another holiday romance. I've got no good memories of Turkey whatsoever.