Mariella Frostrup: Why the best mini breaks are husband-free, especially this one
You don’t have to be an agony aunt to know there’s a more diplomatic way to react to your husband cancelling a romantic night away due to work commitments than a whoop of delight. Believe me, though, any other response would have lacked my trademark honesty.
Who’d sniff at 12 hours away in a sumptuous suite at Raymond Blanc’s gastronomically renowned Oxfordshire institution – now the Belmond Le Manoir Aux Quat’Saisons – even if it was to be a solitary mini-break?
Especially when the offer in question was a room at one of my all-time favourite hotels, a pioneering experiment when it opened in the late Eighties, enticing the great and good of the cultural world – instead of whispering couples pretending they were hitched – through its vast oak doorways.
I’ve always enjoyed travelling alone and nowadays, with four of us in the house and the juggle of work commitments, childcare and marriage, I’m open to pretty much any offers that get me out of the door.
My happiness levels soared as I was ushered into my opulent room, hints of the Orient in the water-reed mural behind my bed and jade-hued linen blinds over mullioned windows. The bathroom was big enough to have a party in and the shower suite and steam room, in black, promised further diversion. It was very tempting to hole up with a box set in the expanse of crisp linen on my super-size bed and devour haute cuisine from room service.
Strolling alone into a romantically lit dining room, full of freshly showered twosomes gazing into each other’s eyes, can be forbidding; but the alternative would mean missing out on the delicious decadence of dining out on a dinner for one. It’s one of my greatest pleasures.
My debut experience of eating out on my own was at 22, on a seven-day package holiday to Gambia. Each night I sat playing voyeur in the dining room and observed the crowds steadily dwindling until, by night six, only me and Winston Churchill’s charming 16-year-old grandson were left, all the other guests having succumbed to Banjul Belly.
That trip had an enduring upside. I discovered the pleasures of keeping your own company over a meal; the opportunity for observation and the confidence you get from defeating your fears and entering a dining room alone. Despite huge leaps toward equality, we women remain notoriously reluctant to be seen eating by ourselves, the dark-age connotation being that you’ve been stood up or are a woman of “ill repute”.
Thankfully, as more of us travel independently, such misplaced presumptions are dissipating. Knowing that you can walk the world alone if necessary offers a sense of liberation that I suspect is hard for many men to understand.
Presenting your solo self as a topic of conversation for tongue-tied romantics on a gourmet getaway is not only good for you, it can seem an act of charity. The middle-distant stare of twosomes experiencing uncomfortable proximity furthers the pleasure of solo dining.
In the dining room with its wooden floors and white candlelit tables, surrounded by well-heeled lovers and families celebrating landmark birthdays, I felt positively blessed not having to make conversation. Instead, with shameless indulgence, I sat reading Julian Barnes’s aptly titled Keeping an Eye Open while savouring crab with kaffir lime and coconut, followed by a plate of perfectly prepared seasonal vegetables from Monsieur Blanc’s famous kitchen garden.
As an author who first achieved fame in 1984 with Flaubert’s Parrot, published the same year Le Manoir opened, Barnes was the ideal companion: silent, portable and inspiring.
Back then, finding a place where you didn’t have to whisper and overdress in order to enjoy quality food was a challenge. Nowadays a country-house hotel without a spa, pool and further entertainment is a novelty. Belmond Le Manoir Aux Quat’Saisons, with its wonderful food, elegant accommodation and warm welcome, deserves acclaim for its seductively simple offering.
Indeed, next time my husband faces a pressing work commitment, I might just check in for the cookery course.
The essentials
Belmond Le Manoir Aux Quat’Saisons currently has rooms from £961 per night. For a full review and to book, visit telegraph.co.uk/tt-lemanoir
