Our Homer Run; Jed Novick and Family Embark on a Greek Odyssey of Their Own - Inspired by a GCSE Course in Classics

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LIKE all the best ideas, it was simple and brilliant. We wanted a holiday that would tap into our adventurer spirit and keep the children entertained - a holiday that would be about more than just eating and drinking while we moaned about the kids doing nothing except eating and drinking.

Then came the lightbulb moment: we persuaded our 15-year-old daughter, Ellie, to take Classics GCSE. 'It's just great stories. You'll love it,' we said, and when she came home one day enthusing about Homer's Odyssey, an idea for the perfect family holiday began to form.

We'd make it real. Before having children, my wife and I had been Odyssean travellers, finding our way across the world, bumping into life's challenges and negotiating gods and monsters along the way. A Homeric holiday might bring out the hero in us all. We'd fly to Athens and make our way to Ithaca, home of Odysseus. It would be an epic voyage where we'd face our own challenges, see off our own cyclops, resist the sirens - and if any suitors came looking for my girls ...

Unlike Odysseus, who had ten …