Nigella Lawson was right to argue that parents should have a half-term too. After all the stress involved in hanging around the school gates to drop the kids off and then hanging around again to pick them up, every parent deserves a holiday - time to remind themselves of what things were like before the nippers came mewling and puking into their lives.

Wonderful theory; just one niggle in practice: where do the children play while you're on half-term? Because, lovely as they are, they're rarely invited to stay for longer than a quick video and a rushed tea. Which gives you the chance to watch Countdown without interruption, but precious little else. And then we got lucky. After a deal of finagling we persuaded a compliant babysitter to move in for a long weekend and gunned the Fiat Panda towards Tylney Hall, Hampshire.

Driving down the M3 we calculated that - excluding weddings, on the ground that the presence of a hundred other guests prevents these being considered as romantic breaks for two - this was our first weekend à deux for four years. All a bit baffling, really. We tried some non-kid small talk, mentioned the weather, and lapsed into a happy silence.

Hiding the Panda behind a convenient Daimler, we made our way, with some trepidation, towards Tylney Hall. The point of a Top Notch Country House Hotel is that it should look imposing and impressive; a side-effect of this is that it is easy to be daunted. It's the golf-club moment. Do you look wrong? Will they summarily evict you for wearing the wrong jumper?

We needn't have had any fear. The staff couldn't have been more friendly and accommodating. We were given a guided tour - 'over to your right, an unrivalled view of Basingstoke' - before being shown to our room. This was marginally bigger than our flat: four-poster bed, big bathroom, and a living-room with two sofas, four armchairs, a bottle of champagne, some dried fruit and a television tuned into Sky Sports One.

It didn't take long to unwind and in half an hour we found ourselves sitting on a bench in the grounds and looking at a lake. Next stop, the cocktail bar where the ebullient Thomas promised us 'I make the very best gin and tonics'. He did too. Then dinner. And then back to Thomas who had moved up to Armagnac. Very, very fine Armagnac: 'I think you might enjoy this one, sir. An old friend of mine makes his own and brings me over a bottle now and then.' He produced a litre of 1930 Armagnac which tasted even better than it sounds.

Thomas, obviously, was an excellent fellow, an ex-member of the D'Oyly Carte with a fine baritone voice equally adept at discussing topics ranging from the local pubs to whether there might be a strange sub-sect of people living in the basement of Dolphin Square. A fine time was had by all.

Day two was, if possible, even more relaxing. A quick swim in the morning, a frame of snooker, a comfortable walk to a country pub, and a kip in the afternoon. We could have played golf but 'darling, how do you fancy caddying for me?' is a question I've always found something of a mood-wrecker on a romantic weekend. We could have gone sight-seeing but... why bother? Instead we did nothing, which was precisely what we wanted to do. And Tylney Hall - and this is intended as a compliment - provided the perfect surroundings for doing nothing. It was notable how many other residents wended their way to the local pub to have lunch.

In the evening, another meal and - you'd be a fool not to - more Armagnac with Thomas's co-waiter attempting to out-Thomas Thomas with an equally fine vintage. A choice of drinks and a choice of three bars, all with log fires, in which to drink them. You could go on a sophisticated pub-crawl without leaving the hotel. Perfect.

Now, before anyone accuses me of seeing everything through Armagnac-clouded glasses, a few quibbles. The food is fine but not outstanding. But when a dispute arose halfway through a bottle of Lebanese red as to whether it was off, they provided an immediate replacement.

My only other - the only other possible - complaint is that the coffee was on the watery side of bland. You could, of course, bring your own Thermos but that would be churlish given the excellent standards everywhere else. Better, if you must, to complain, but seeing as it took half a bottle of red before we had the guts to mention there might be something wrong with the wine we were hardly likely to get our acts together over an espresso. Nor, frankly, could we be bothered. We were having far too good a time to start whingeing.

Weekend rates at Tylney Hall (01256 764881) start at £195 per double room per night including breakfast and table d'hote dinner.