There are some things we only do on holiday. Drinking a G and T at 6am, for example, or voluntarily attending a Michael Jackson tribute night, or making friends with an odd couple from Barnsley that you’ll silently watch on FB for the next decade. Then there’s the biggie, holiday romances.

At home you might be a carefully calculated dater with your app game honed and refined but a holiday means the meeting-someone-IRL odds are in your favour, even if the romance disappears faster than your pre-vacation fake tan. We heard from five women about their most shocking holiday flings…

Period Drama

In the early 2010’s I was on one of those activity style holidays where you get all your sports and entertainment thrown in for the price. This was not my sort of thing, really, I had no interest in an 8am archery class, but I’d been lazy and let the organised one of our friendship group take over and had just handed over the cash. One major bonus was there was loads of very fit single men and within the first couple of nights we’d met a fun group and I’d got on well with Dan a handsome doctor. Because we were all sharing rooms we’d done nothing more than what we could get away with on a quiet corner of the beach but I really wanted to sleep with him.

My last night coincided with a foam party (yep, it was the 2010’s after all) and we all got absolutely smashed. Dan and I decided to stumble back early knowing his roommates wouldn’t be back for ages. We had very drunken sex and passed out for a few hours. When I woke up I had period pain and vaguely remembered coming on my period some time the previous evening. I also remembered having sex. What I didn’t remember was what I did with my tampon.

A panicked visit to the toilet and I realised it was still in and was completely stuck. I had a flight to catch and bags to pack and started completely freaking out. I sheepishly went back into the bedroom and told Dan. He was totally unphased and said he’d seen this loads of times in A and E and he’d sort it. I was mortified but had no option. He then scrubbed up to his elbows like he was going into surgery before telling me to crouch over the sink and ‘bear down’. I can not go into detail about what happened next but after me feeling like a human puppet he eventually managed to remove it. The worst thing is he was a really nice guy who texted me to meet up back home, but I just couldn’t face him.

Key to my heart

I went on a girls’ holiday a few years ago to cheer myself up in the middle of a breakup. I’d instigated the split but we’d been together a long time so I was still feeling blue. One added complication of the trip was my ex’s sister, Emily, was part of the group and she hoped we’d get back together. I decided not to hang out that much with her, there was eight of us in our villa so it wasn’t too hard, and thought apart from a few awkward conversations it’d be ok.

Things were fine until I met someone on a night out and decided a no strings one night stand was exactly what I needed. I really didn’t want Emily to know, so I only told my best mate I was going home with him and asked her not to tell the others. We all tended to drift in and out in the evenings so all would have been fine if it hadn’t been for one of our other mates putting the only key we’d taken out into my handbag without me knowing. A few hours later I was the other side of the island having a lovely time whilst my mates tried to call my now-dead phone as they were locked out. I came home mid-morning the next day thinking I’d be able to sneak in as they snoozed off their hangovers to find them huddled on sunbeds having spent the whole night outside waiting for me. I was very unpopular the rest of that trip.

Dad’s the word

I was spending a summer in the South of France as one of my university friends had a family flat there. We’d often go and have drinks by the local marina and watch the super-rich come in from their yachts. It was usually men of a certain age with their more youthful wives but one evening I noticed a much younger man than usual, about my age and good looking.

I got talking to him. He was from London like me and was on a sailing holiday with his dad. We hit it off and after a few evenings of dinners and drinks he asked me if I wanted to go for a day and night on his dad’s boat and we’d travel round the coast to watch a firework display you could only see from the sea.

As soon as I met his dad I felt something wasn’t quite right. He insisted on fitting my life jacket himself and did a weird shudder when he fastened it across my chest. I brushed it off and looked forward to the rest of the trip. That evening I was in the sitting room area whilst my date showered and suddenly the dad came out in nothing but a black thong and stood over me so his crotch was at eye level and said, ‘Not bad for 55 am I darling, are you sure you wouldn’t rather be in my room tonight?’

I decided to pretend I hadn’t heard and squeezed past him and went back to my room. We then went out for a very awkward dinner which actually gave me my revenge, he was very fussy about the toilets on board (he had given me a lecture on how much toilet paper I was allowed) and I got hideous food poisoning and vomited everywhere blocking all the sinks and toilets meaning we had to return back to where I was staying much earlier.

Light-fingered Love

A long time ago I managed to score a really expensive press trip- basically a free holiday that I’d write up in my review of for the paper I worked for. It was a group trip so I was with other writers who were luckily all up for a good time. We went out every night and on our last night I met this really fit guy in a club and decided to take him back to the hotel.

We had a fun night so I was a bit upset when I woke up and he’d gone but put it down to just being a holiday fling. Until I realised some things were missing: he’d emptied the minibar which in a hotel where rooms started at £500 was a fortune and scooped up loads of other things like those fancy leather trays for putting your jewellery in and some vases. I panicked and just checked out without telling anyone. I worried for weeks after but no one ever said anything. I don’t even work in media any more but I still worry someone might call me about it one day…

Cult Hero

A friend and I were staying in a youth hostel in Lisbon and on the first evening went to some welcome drinks and we all decided to go for dinner. One guy seemed to take a real liking to me and he was good looking and sexy but quite intense and so I wasn’t 100% sure. There were some questions about where he lived and his back story didn’t quite seem to add up. Later in the evening it came out that he had recently split with his girlfriend so I put his slightly socially awkward behaviour down to that and I was enjoying the flirting so I carried on.

We ended up leaving together and we chatted and drank together for a few hours back at the hostel rooftop. Again he had some slightly odd habits but I thought what the hell I’m on holiday, I’ll do it for the plot. We kissed and arranged to meet up the next day. The next evening he was stranger still and so my friend decided to do a bit of online stalking. She discovered he had until a few days before been in a cult. This was a step too far even for me so I made my excuses and we moved hostels the next morning.