Goa Family Holiday — Dudhsagar Falls, the Aguada Boats, the Bird Sanctuary and the Aircraft at Bogmalo

Your driver meets you at Mopa or Dabolim, about an hour from Candolim from either, with child seats on request. The afternoon is free to settle in and find the beach, a five-minute walk from most of the Candolim stays, where the sand is wide and the shacks serve early. The days that follow each start after breakfast and end back here, so there is nothing to unpack twice. Dinner on the Candolim road, where the restaurants are used to families.

Fort Aguada opens at half past nine and is ten minutes from the stay: the great freshwater cistern that gave the fort its name, the four-storey lighthouse of 1864 and the ramparts to run along, with the beach laid out below. From the Sinquerim jetty beneath the fort the boats go out for an hour along the headland and across the river mouth; the humpback dolphins of these waters are seen on most runs in season but are never promised, and the boat is worth it for the fort from the sea alone. Lunch at a shack, and the afternoon on Candolim beach with the car free if you would rather try the water sports at Baga.

The big day out. An early start for the two-hour drive east to Kulem on the edge of the Bhagwan Mahavir Wildlife Sanctuary, where the Forest Department’s shared jeeps take the forest track, fording three streams, to a point twenty minutes’ walk below the falls; the safari runs from nine until four, October to May, and is suspended for the monsoon. Dudhsagar — the Sea of Milk — drops 310 metres in four tiers down the Western Ghats with the railway bridge across its face, and the pool at its foot is for wading when the rangers allow it. Life jackets are provided. Lunch at Kulem on the way back, and a late afternoon return to Candolim; a long day, and the one the children will remember.

A morning on the water of a gentler kind: the free ferry from Ribandar, just east of Panaji, crosses the Mandovi in fifteen minutes to Chorão island, and at the landing the boatmen of the Salim Ali Bird Sanctuary take you paddling through the mangroves for an hour and a half — kingfishers, egrets, ibis and, at low tide, the mudskippers and crabs the children spot first; the trip runs to the tide, so the time is fixed the day before. In the afternoon drive south past Dabolim to Bogmalo, six kilometres from Vasco, for the Naval Aviation Museum: aircraft on open display you can walk under, from the Super Constellation to the Sea Harrier, and a two-storey hangar of cockpits and engines. It opens Tuesday to Sunday from ten until five, and the day is arranged so that it never falls on the Monday. Back to Candolim for the last evening on the beach.

A last breakfast, the beach if the flight allows, and the drive to Mopa or Dabolim, an hour and a quarter from Candolim to either in daytime traffic. If your flight is in the evening the car can go by way of Reis Magos Fort across the river from Panaji, restored, shaded and easy on small legs, and open Tuesday to Sunday. The package ends at the airport.