Far and away my best Christmas trip: a cottage on the Pembrokeshire coast

Going away for the festivities can raise issues from sleeping to catering to whether Santa will still find you. But get it right and it can be a yuletide miracle

And then the dreaded words were spoken: “Let’s all go away for Christmas.”

We braced ourselves for the avalanche of opposition, particularly from the most formidable quarters: children and grandparents. Like most families we were riven by deaths, divorces, distance and Marmite. Christmas had become a crazy shuttling between familiar locations: picking people up, dropping others off, constantly eating. How many times in one day can you say with conviction to several different relatives, “Yes, your Christmas cake is the very best”? And constantly making amends, “I’m sorry, but we left all your presents at the last house we were in. Everything is such a rush …”