Esther Coren says

I come from a parsimonious family. As a child I wore hand-me-downs and my hair was cut with the kitchen scissors. We had own-brand cereal for breakfast. The family car was a hideous white Ford Granada and my mother went shopping at 4 pm and bought whatever had a‘ Reduced’ sticker on it for our dinner. Holidays were in Wales. Sometimes Wiltshire.

Giles is not from a parsimonious family. The Corens are generous, big-living, fun-having enthusiasts. Smart cars and ha i rcut s, good shoes, housekeepers, lavish gifts, many sunny holidays, the finest foods–these are all just basic requirements for them.

So when, a few months into our relationship, Giles talked about ‘winter sun’, I assumed he meant one of those cold, clear, crisp days in January when it’s a good opportunity to air musty winter coats in the garden.

But no. He meant spending thousands to fly across the world to find some sun in the wintertime. He was evangelical about it, as if it was a human right, like access to clean water and education without fear of persecution.

‘Oh,’ I thought, ‘you are one of those people.’ Those people who arrived back at school and university at the star t of spring term with rich tans, whom I enthusiastically despised as spoilt and entitled. I like the sun, but I do not wit her and fade without it. I am pale and freckled: I can synthesise enough vitamin D from a grey morning in Glasgow to see me from Christmas through to Easter.

I thought that once we had kids Giles would give up this preposterous idea of spending £15,000 per year on a stupid holiday (you can get a George Smith sofa for that and you’ ll have it forever !). Surely dragging a toddler across the world in this foolish search for sunshine would be out of the question. After all, you can get sun in England entirely free of charge if you only wait a few more months and stand outside at the right time of day.

But no, Giles meant it. He genuinely wanted us to cross the planet with Kitty when she was one year old. The thought of what such a trip might do to the careful routine I had in place was horrible. Not to mention the fact that what I wanted to do on a sunny holiday – laze about reading – was at direct odds with what Kitty wanted to do on holiday – stagger about dangerously on cliff edges and eat sand. So I said, no. Absolutely not.

But he wouldn’t let it go. It was like living with a huge, angry wasp stuck in a bottle, buzzing‘ winnnnnnterrrrr zzzzunnnn, winnnterrrr zzzunnnn’. I stalled for time. I sent him away on his own with Kitty when she was three to Antigua, then a year later to Dubai.

Then t his yea r, when Sam was old enough to have a raving ipad addiction, Giles pointed out that surely he could do a flight without having to be walked up and down the aisle for three hours.

‘Well, OK,’ I said and then added two conditions designed to kill the idea stone dead. ‘But only if we fly business and I get a whole new resort wardrobe.’ ‘Fine,’ he said. And that was that. I picked Six Senses at Zighy Bay because I kept reading about it in newspapers and hearing about it from friends. It had everything: the rooms were dreamy little cabanas with their own pools, the beach was right there. There was a kids’ club (not that my kids will ever stay in a kids’ club, but if a hotel has one it is a good sign ). And the time difference of four hours was manageable: it wouldn’t involve the physical and mental carnage of somewhere like Mexico, where I went when I was 20 and was so sick with jet lag that I am not sure that I have completely recovered even now.

Three days before we flew, I checked the forecast. The screen showed a neat line of grey clouds. One had a cute little lightning bolt zigzagging out of it. I rang my sister. ‘We are flying seven hours to sit under a cloud,’ I whined.

‘It won’t rain all the time ,’ she said confidently. ‘And it looks warm. At least you won’t have to put the kids’ shoes and coats and hats on each time you go out.’

And she was right. Genuinely one of the greatest woes of winter with small children is putting all the layers on to go outside then taking them all off the other end. When we arrived I tossed all of our shoes into the bottom of the beautiful carved dark-wood wardrobe and didn’t think about them for a week.

The children were delighted – they hate shoes. And the rain meant nothing to them. In fact, it was a good thing: they didn’t have to wear sun cream and could play outside all day. All they need on holiday is pancakes for breakfast, colouring-in, toy cars and swimming in warm pools, whether it’s raining or not.

With simply lolling in the heat removed from the list of possible pastimes, we had to find things to do. Kitty and I went beach combing every morning, finding beautiful be speckled, exotic gem-like shells – some still inhabited. Kitty would shriek and wave the shell in the air. ‘There’s someone still at home!’ Giles tried to teach Sam to read, failed miserably, and then tried to teach him to swim, and sort of succeeded.

Giles was devastated by the weather, of course. All he wants to do is fry himself t he colour of an overdone Wall’s banger. He was glued to every weather app he could find, looking for the one with the best news and shouting, ‘There’s one here that says it might be intermittently sunny on Thursday!’

Every positive thing was qualified by a weather disclaimer. ‘This cocktail would be delicious,’ he’d say, ‘if only the sun were shining.’ But he was delighted at the same time. Zighy Bay is magical: the food is exquisite, the atmosphere is gentle and friendly, and there were endless opportunities for tennis, waterskiing, walking… which we didn’t take because we’re not health nuts.

And we did get some sun. Two glorious days at t he end, when we sat in hammocks while our children, who normally fight like cat and dog, played harmoniously in the vast playground that backs on to the beach.

Most of all, Giles had the satisfaction of me finding absolutely nothing to complain about. And I didn’t even give him a hard time when Sam had a bit of jet lag the week we returned.

Giles thinks he has won the winter sun debate. He’s had that victory gleam in his eye ever since we got back. And he might be right. I would go back to ZighyBaywi thou ta murmur every winter for the rest of my life. But that’s it. Zighy Bay is as far as I go. Nothing further, nothing braver. Certainly nowhere like, for example, Mexico.

Amazing Hotels: Life Beyond the Lobby starts on 27 March on BBC2 at 9pm