On Trying To Find a Holiday

Mrs Grumpy and I are looking to go on holiday in February - and because of Mrs Grumpy's chosen profession we are limited to the half term week.
So - being an organised sort of person I want to search the internet for a holiday during that week, within our budget and from one of our prefered airports (ie not Gatwick).
You'd think that was easy - uh? Well no actually.

My preferred engine of choice www.directline-holidays.co.uk has the largest choice, but appears to have the highest prices; next best was a new one to me www.holidayhypermarket.co.uk which frequently crashed and had a very limited selection of tour providers, and generally gave me holidays well outside my date ranges; closely followed by www.teletextholidays.co.uk. which had no - and I mean no - holidays that matched our requirements.

Surely it can't be beyond the wit of the clever people out there to design an aggregator that allows me to rank my departure date, price ceiling, and departure options - and then give me accurate results to select from (in the manner of holiday hypermarket perhaps).

Oh yes! My local friendly high street travel agent? Well I suspect that's where we'll end up going. I know that they are on commission and will point us to whatever is giving them the best rake off - and I know I won't have the chance to get the dirt off of Trip advisor - which, by the way, is becoming seriously difficult to get a consensus from - but at least if we have a sh*t holiday, I can go back and whinge at the poor counter staff!