Sunscreen reviews: it’s been a while. Mainly because (until recently) I hadn’t been anywhere hot for almost four years. And to properly test out sun protection, to really get to grips with the texture and the effectiveness and the pros and the cons of a particular product, you need a good long stint of testing time somewhere hot enough to actually want to sit out in your swimwear.
Face sunscreens are easy enough to trial – even on the cloudy day in the UK you can wang them on and find out whether or not they feel chalky or greasy or whether they sit nicely under makeup or make you burst out into a thousand pustulous spots. But body sunscreens are a testing no-go unless you’re somewhere warm – because who in their right mind is going to spend their time basting themselves in a white, potentially sticky SPF lotion if they’re not going to be lying on a lounger in Greece/Cyprus/St Kitts listening to kids screaming/piped muzak and periodically dozing off with their face stuck to the front cover of an airport novel"
Nope, I find that I need at least a week of reliable sun to give body sunscreens a thorough appraisal, which is precisely what I managed to get at the wonderful Domes of Elounda* resort in Crete. Apparently the week before we arrived had been very cold and windy, so I was overjoyed to luck out and get seven full days of sunshine.
At a minimum it was twenty-one degrees, which isn’t even that hot (we used to go to Greec...