This summer I took my first trip outside the UK since Brexit got done. I took a relaxing beach-based holiday in delightful Croatia — coincidentally the newest member of the European Union.

I’d never been to this part of the world before, but as a former Sandown boy I identified with what was going on. Beaches, ice-cream parlours, coach parties and beachside restaurants. It’s a holiday destination I can recommend.

So how did a visit to Europe feel, as an outsider? Longer queues at the airport we’ve all heard about, but what’s life like for nations still labouring under the yoke of the EU? I have to say that these Croatians have got it sorted.

Firstly, the beaches. Croatia has the best bathing water quality in the whole of the EU — I tried it and can confirm. The beach facilities were second to none, and mostly free. It seemed as though this former socialist republic had yet to abandon the idea of providing public services. If austerity was a thing in Croatia they kept it well-hidden.

Next, I assumed that the country would be suffering the ignominy of stifling red tape — the sort that we in the UK are constantly told that we must now shake off. But everything I saw suggested otherwise.

Our comfortable apartment had no fire escape or fire alarm, and an arrangement for cooking with bottled propane that had me wondering if we might be safer dining out. 

Roadworks in Croatia are delightfully informal and if anybody was wearing protective clothing I didn’t see it. Some of the farm vehicles I saw piloted by wizened oldsters on the roads looked like they dated from the war before last, and the delicious artisan produce at the numerous market stalls we passed was most certainly not all being kept at a constant temperature.

So presumably this nation, with less than half the population of Greater London, was a bit of a backwater? Not at all. We saw new roads and cars almost everywhere we went, and even visited one of the many huge, well-stocked supermarkets on the way.

Of course it wasn’t all idyllic. It was hard not to consider the murderous war that birthed this country just a few decades back, even if on the ground there was little sign of it.

Some of the new retail developments look profoundly out of place in the Mediterranean countryside, and the new highways are vast and mostly empty.

This suggests an enthusiasm for commercial regeneration that could lead the Croatians down the road we unwisely took, towards empty high streets and endless out of town developments.

But somehow, deprived of their sovereignty, Croatia is doing fine. A range of problems we are told are the fault of the EU seem to have been solved.

Isn’t this what we voted to be rid of all those years ago? At a beach greengrocer (yes really) I bought a cucumber just to be sure. It was bent.