I’m thrilled to hear from more people who are deciding to try a mini digital detox and are picking their summer holidays as an ideal time to experiment living mobile free.

My tips:

-Make sure you have a camera with you so that you don’t feel compelled to reach for your mobile as this will only tempt you back in to checking it for messages and the lure of the apps can be too strong.

-Tell people what you are doing before you switch off the mobile so that they don’t feel worried about you or even ignored, give them an alternative way of getting hold of you in an emergency.

- Get a holiday phone IF you need to be contactable for work. Many men and women have told me their need to be contactable for business, even though they are meant to be on holiday, so the answer is to downgrade the phone from a smartphone to a dumb phone - they are inexpensive and you can swap over your sim card - just take a simple mobile that does text and calls only away with you.

If you are in a group on holiday I of course know that creating a whats app group is many people’s favourite hero feature of the smartphone - I appreciate this, but I would urge you to try without it. Making plans and sticking to them, finding each other in new locations is all part of the fun and adventure of being on holiday. If you don’t challenge yourself or your children you won’t nurture and discover your own resilience.

Here is something I wrote in my diary last summer, during my year’s self-imposed challenge of living without a mobile phone and its still relevant today:

A POSTCARD TO YOU: I'm aghast as I sit melting away all traces of stress in the heat of the Majorca sun - you see I'm two weeks into a beach holiday and just getting into my 'holiday stride' - or more accurately, a holiday swagger. Life's pretty chilled I can admit, watching from the shade of my straw umbrella, on a much-prized sunbed I've been lucky enough to secure, I see bikini clad teenagers playing bat and ball, women dipping their babies in the shoreline ripples as men in neon coloured trunks sip ice cold beers at the beach bar - very 'tranquillo' as the locals put it. Yet, one thing that still astonishes me is the amount of time that many of these beach lovers spend on their mobiles while in this idyllic setting!  Really? - do they really need to be 'somewhere else' too?  Can life not do without them for a couple of hours?

I'm seven months into living mobile free and I'm still alive and very much living in the moment all the time, Being in the now - I'm living life with 100% consciousness and it makes me acutely aware of how many people are not.

I realise sadly that maybe I am one of the few who are really 'on holiday' and free to relax fully without any tech to pull my attention away. So why not take a holiday from your smartphone - after all, when were you last truly on holiday? Keep your tech habit in check and you'll discover so many exciting things. - WISH YOU WERE 'HERE' Kx

2019: As I sit here re-reading my ‘postcard’ from last year, I realise that I so took on board the message and thank goodness I did! I’m permanently’on holiday’ this year as I don’t pack a mobile phone and can’t believe that I didn’t ditched it sooner.