Read our full guide to Sri Lanka

We’d spent the first two days in Sri Lanka acclimatising in the Kalutara Highlands, two hours (ish) outside Colombo, staying at Glenross Living, a 19th-century Scottish hillside mansion turned wellness hotel buried in a tropical tangle of tea, cinnamon and rubber plantations. This provided an education, the type my son thought he’d left behind for the spring term: we learnt that Sri Lanka is the world’s fourth-largest exporter of tea, that rubber produced here is used for latex and tyres — and small bouncy balls that he wouldn’t let go of for the next week — and that cinnamon tea is a far superior sharpener than Earl Grey.

Samuel learnt how to tap a rubber tree on a walk around the 98-acre estate; the adults blissed out to the heavenly scent of cinnamon as we napped overlooking misty hills of fern and ivy. Over breakfast on Glenross’s terrace on our first morning we ogled Bengal monitor lizards slithering up the coconut trees, were deafened by chapping geckos and later sat silently as lightning struck the hills opposite and thunder rumbled over the heritage building. Our home in southeast London felt a galaxy away. Welcome to the tropics, kid.

By the time we reached the hippy beach town of Mirissa, between Galle and Tangalle, we were all in need of a bit of doing nothing, and so gratefully flopped beside the 42m-long saltwater pool at Sri Sharavi Beach Villas & Spa. If I were 21 and could still fit into my elephant harem trousers, I’d love the town’s main drag of backpacker joints, cheap spas and cafés called things like Sunset Bar, Lost Paradise and Coconut Kitchen. As it was, three days of doing pulse-slowing activities, such as eating Sri Lankan chicken lamprais, a sort of fried rice wrapped in a banana leaf, for lunch, picking up king coconuts and frangipani flowers from the sand and playing volleyball in the pool, where the only wildlife was other people’s children, were just right.

Well, we were almost doing nothing. I’m not the sort to take it easy, even on holiday. One morning we kicked things up a gear with a morning cycle ride with Idle Bikes, taking on an eight-mile loop around the paddy fields on the outskirts of Galle, laughing at egrets balancing on water buffaloes’ horns as they lolled in big puddles (adults £15, children £8; idlebikes.com). Another night we took a gentle boat trip around Garadu Gaga lake, stopping in the middle to explore an island that looked like it belonged in Enid Blyton’s The Faraway Tree and to nudge mimosa flowers, which would close coyly when touched. We knew dusk by the bats that would wake up shrieking (relatable, I thought) and fly in their thousands across the water, darkening the sky above us. Samuel made all the right noises but I think he was secretly more taken with the four pigeons living on our hotel balcony.