‘If you have dodgy joints, you can hire one of the increasingly popular electric bikes’

main tourist attraction in December. While you’re in town, stock up on Christmas gifts in one of my favourite independent bookshops, Mr B’s Emporium of Reading Delights (www. mrbsemporium.com), replete with armchairs, nooks and free hot drinks.

Biking in Barcelona

I always think the street life in Catalonia is sui generis: even the sugary churros in paper cones smell different. Much of the city is flat, the cycle lanes are good and plentiful, and although it’s certainly not hot in December – 11C– it’s pretty much always a few degrees warmer there than in the UK. A quick trawl of the internet unearths many twowheeled options, from individual architect-guided excursions to group tours, and if you have dodgy joints, you can hire one of the increasingly popular electric bikes. The citizens like their public Christmas trees, the biggest being on Portal del Angel near Plaça Catalunya, and they will be impressed if you come out with the word for the traditional nativity scene in Catalan: pessebre.

Join the Saints

Take the opportunity to see the South Atlantic island of St Helena before its first-ever airport finally opens. I went this year. The six-day voyage out from Cape Town on RMS St Helena is very much part of the experience. Half freight and half passenger, the mail ship St Helena’s splendid isolation is ending – the very last royal one on the high seas – serves beef tea on the sundeck while pursers in white shorts umpire a cricket match called the South Atlantic Ashes. The crew (mostly Saints, as St Helena residents are known) will certainly make both Christmas and New Year a jolly and old-fashioned experience. And of course the advantage of starting your holiday in Cape Town means you don’t have to grapple with jet lag, as South Africa is in the same time zone as the UK.

Golden days

Back on the Iberian peninsula, here’s a floating option. I did a river cruise for the first time this year and enjoyed it far more than I expected. You disembark almost every day and can take as much or as little exercise as you like, a big advantage over ocean-going ships. Viking is probably the best company in the field (the quality of guides and lecturers on my trip was high, though I advise caution, as always, when it comes to folk dancing displays). On the ten-day Lisbon to Porto and beyond route, the 262ft, 106-person capacity Hemming follows the Douro, the fabled River of Gold ( pictured left), and ends up in Spain’s Salamanca. Lush green banks and not a Brussels sprout in sight.

Happy holiday travels.