Oooh, heaven is a place on earth.

If the road to hell is paved with good intentions, the road to heaven was paved with camels and cock ups.

A while back, Mark and his friends made provisional reservations for a group trip to Fujairah over the Eid holiday. Sadly, everyone else in the UAE seemed to have made similar plans for Eid, and what sounded like a nice idea turned out to be hugely expensive. So, they decided to cancel the reservation.

Unfortunately, while everyone else actually cancelled their bookings. Mark remained at the decision stage.

Since hotel receptionists are not psychic, we were left with a very expensive, very "non-transferrable, non-refundable" booking we couldn't even use because Rachel had organised Dylan's birthday party over the Eid weekend, labouring under the false impression that Mark was not a muppet.

Mark

Forgetful Jones

Fortunately, despite being extremely foolish, Mark can also be rather charming. So he got back on the phone and used his Irish accent to not only transfer the non-transferrable booking, but also to get the price reduced by 50% as we were going outside the Eid holiday.

So off we drove, last weekend, from Dubai to Fujairah - the only one of the seven Emirates on the East coast (Gulf of Oman) rather than the West Coast (Persian Gulf)

It was a strange drive through the desert, with only camels and large cement lorries for company.

But the place itself was amazing. Too good for words - so here are a few pictures...

We had such a great time, that Dylan - who is renowned for spending every family holiday chanting, 'I want to go home' - turned round with a big grin and declared, for the first time ever:

'I don't want to go home'

In fact, the only way we got the kids out of the resort without a complete meltdown was by getting a golf buggy to take us...