OK so last week I was bemoaning the pretentiousness of swanky hotels. Pennyhill Park could do with taking a leaf from the books of this lovely place – New Hall in Sutton Coldfield. This place has bags and bags of charisma….mind you, as it dates back to 1250, I’d say it’d be difficult to stuff up that aspect but there are granite fireplaces (just like Cornwall) and slate floors (just like Cornwall) and there are no ingratiatingly horrid staff.

I’ve been ‘up-country’ yet again working. This time for an unusually appreciative client and a project that’s been a pleasure to work on. Hurrah. They say that for every bad experience you get a good one and this is our reward for the stresses and trauma of last week.

In fact, despite my heart sinking as I walked in and the memory of last week fresh in my mind, the staff couldn’t have been better, despite our worst excesses. We arrived back here at ten pm after our meetings, hungry and needing a relaxing drink. By the time we’d been here half an hour we’d got food (at this time of night many supposedly business hotels would have shirked at catering for us) and a glass of the red stuff in front of us. No fuss, just good, efficient service with a smile. Especially as two of our number wanted nothing more or less than chocolate and they got hand made truffles!!!!

What a fabulous location, an ancient house with a moat….as you can see here. The moat keeps us safe tonight from marauding intruders. I feel protected.

If you MUST be away from home, this is a perfect place to be. (Yep – I did say Sutton Coldfield.) The evening wore on and we discussed all sort of topics, including holiday destinations and I was regarded as something of a freak when I expressed a desire to never set foot off these shores ever again…..to which my colleagues all had a heart attack but that’s just how I feel. Too much of that travelling stuff and I could see me ending up wearing beige and spending £400 on a handbag.

My world is still a complicated one and still with too much time away from ome but at least now it’s not away in another country, it’s here in this beautiful land that I love so much.

You can take your ‘holiday in the sun’, I’ll take a weekend in the New Hall any day over a fortnight in Tenerife.

Last year, I was in love with my Magimix