WINTER TRAVEL SPECIALMini-breaks

Mmmm. Got lovely new mini-break brochure: Pride of Britain: Leading Country House Hotels of the British Isles. Marvellous. Going through all the pages one by one imagining Daniel and me being alternately sexual and romantic in all the bedrooms and dining-rooms.Bridget Jones’s Diary

Last weekend my husband and I went on a mini-break to Majorca. Two weeks before this we spent a long weekend in Whitby, with friends. Earlier this summer I attended a two-day hen weekend in Manchester, and next week my husband is off on a three-day mid-week break to Valencia for the famous annual tomato-throwing (sounds like most dinner times with my two-year-old, but apparently this is special). I’m hoping to fit in a visit to Sitges before the end of September. And back in March we spent our anniversary night in the Cotswolds.

A round-up of our friends’ weekend breaks over the past few months yields the following list of destinations: Nice, Budapest, Ibiza, Malaga, Rome, Port Merrion, Dublin (twice), Newcastle (stag weekend), another Cotswolds trip, Istanbul, Florence, Henlow Grange, Morocco, Amsterdam, Alghero and Padstow.