Ask most people when they’d book a villa in the Mediterranean and you’ll get the same answer: August. Sometimes July, if they’re trying to be clever about it. Almost nobody says September, which is odd, because September is when the whole thing actually starts to work properly.

I say this every year to clients who wince slightly, as if I’ve suggested something a bit off. There’s a deep-rooted assumption that summer holidays belong in summer, full stop, and that anything after the school term starts is somehow a lesser version of the same trip. It isn’t. In a lot of cases, it’s the better one. It’s just taken the travel industry a surprisingly long time to say so out loud.

What actually changes once August ends

The temperature drops a few degrees, which sounds unremarkable until you’ve tried to enjoy a long lunch outdoors in 38-degree heat with children who won’t stop complaining about it. By mid-September, most of the Mediterranean settles into something closer to perfect – warm enough to swim comfortably morning and evening, cool enough that walking around a town at 2pm doesn’t feel like an endurance exercise.

The crowds thin considerably too, and not in a subtle way. Restaurants that needed booking weeks ahead in August will often take you same-day in September. Beaches that were shoulder to shoulder empty out. Roads that crawled through July move properly again. None of this is a minor convenience – it changes the actual texture of the holiday, because a huge amount of what makes August feel stressful isn’t the heat, it’s the sheer density of other people trying to do the same thing you are, at the same time, in the same places.

The…

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