Twixmas cabin fever? It's still easy to sneak in a mini-break, and I've found the magic formula
For travel obsessives, Christmas represents a peculiar and not entirely well-chosen gift.
I’m sure I’m not alone in idly fantasising about abandoning family, friends, trees and presents and booking a flight to a distant land, forgetting that it’s Christmas time at all and using this precious week off work purely for selfish holiday pleasure.
In our time-poor 21st-century lives, we are increasingly desperate to wring every last drop of leisure out of our time off, which is why in recent years “Twixmas” – those strange days off between Christmas and New Year – has become such a buzzword in travel circles.
We’ve seen the rise of the Twixmas city break, to short-haul destinations such as Seville, Marrakech or Bruges, that offer a glimmer of sunshine and hefty cultural clout to refresh body and mind after a few days of drizzle and Netflix.
We’ve been bombarded by adverts and offers for Twixmas spa breaks, which can be good value compared to the annual January detox/retreat/spa hotel bunfight, when the entire world takes up yoga in the feverish pursuit of a “new” them.
We’ve seen a rise in active Twixmas breaks, as travellers set off for a long weekend surfing in Morocco or skiing in Slovenia before heading back to Britain for the most terrifyingly high-pressure party of the year on New Year’s Eve.
This year, however, amid such political and financial turmoil, I’ve noticed travellers are a little bit more inclined to hunker down. And instead, the shrewd travellers I know are planning ahead to transform tedious Christmastime and New Year travel into a road trip or mini-break in itself.
I know a family who are spending Christmas in Somerset and road-tripping to Orkney for Hogmanay, with two nights in the Lake District in between. I know a young couple who are taking the sleeper train from one set of parents in Fort William after Christmas and finishing up at his family home in Paris, lingering in London and Whitstable along the way. Because even if we’re not in a position to travel far this Twixmas, we can certainly resolve to enjoy the journey between visits to family and friends.
This year, it’s no longer about bombing from A to B, bracing ourselves for traffic jams and queues and crowded train platforms, as we feverishly wish it all over.
There’s no avoiding the pitfalls of travelling at the busiest time of the year, so the best we can do is enter into a process of mediation with the journey.
Spend a little more time on the road, research worthwhile detours and pretty pit stops, and try to reframe it all as a festive road or rail trip. And the good news is that it’s getting an awful lot easier to enjoy the journey these days, with a little bit of patience and planning.
Many small businesses, as well as museums, botanical gardens and other attractions, have happily woken up to the fact that we Britons are not content to sit on our collective sofa between Boxing Day and New Year, and see a steady stream of grateful visitors.
By Boxing Day I’m always raring to get outside, consume comfort-culture to mop up the mulled wine still circulating in my system, and catch up with friends or family members who I didn’t manage to see during the craziness of December.
If we get it right, those days between Christmas and New Year can prove reinvigorating and restorative, thus making time off feel like a genuine holiday.
It might be as simple as booking a night in a stylish, sexy hotel near the station the night before you travel, breaking up time spent on relatives’ sofa beds. The Pilgrm (thepilgrm.com) at Paddington Station in London has transformed the prospect of departing from that station for me.
Or it might mean planning your train journey around mealtimes, so you can have a boozy lunch somewhere like the Goods Shed (thegoodsshed.co.uk) at Canterbury West station, one of my favourite railroad restaurants.
Or it might just mean departing a few hours earlier so you can squeeze in a visit to a National Trust property to break up the tedium of a five-hour drive up the M6.
To read more articles by Anna Hart, see telegraph.co.uk/travel/team/anna-hart.
