The words 'August bank holiday' and 'misery' have somehow become synonymous. The question is: which kind of misery will you opt for next weekend? The 'stay-at-home, sitting on the roof of your caravan waiting for a helicopter to rescue you from rising floodwater' kind, or the 'go abroad and spend half the time camping in an airport terminal' kind?
The last long weekend of the summer wouldn't be the same without dire predictions of travel chaos or freak weather. Yet thousands of us persist in squeezing the most from our precious three days by heading off on a short break.
The rise of the mini-break has been one of the biggest travel phenomena of recent years, with the traditional two-week holiday ditched in favour of lots of bite-sized chunks of travel. You will certainly get to see more places this way. But like most bite-sized snacks, they leave you hungry for more. In an age of congested motorways, ailing rail networks and disgruntled check-in staff, we are just increasing the time we spend travelling and reducing the time we spend in our chosen destination.
I speak as one who spent most of a recent Saturday stuck in gridlock on the M25 en route to a spa hotel. The purpose of the trip? Relaxation. Try telling that to the masseuse who nearly snapped her fingers on my shoulders, taut as steel girders from four hours of gripping a steering wheel. It took a good hour of kneading and 'sounds of the rainforest' mood music to restore me to the state of moderate tension and fatigue that I was in before I set off.
Twenty-four hours later as I sat in my gently overheating car on the same stretch of motorway, only pointing in the opposite direction, I made myself a solemn promise: from now on I'll save my precious days off for a proper holiday: the kind that enables you to make life-changing decisions, catch up on months of lost sleep and read six blockbusters back to back.
Which brings me to the third kind of bank holiday misery and the sweetest of all. Do nothing. Go nowhere. Phone friends who aren't home and feel sorry for yourself because everyone else is off having fun. Then switch on the travel bulletin and allow yourself a smug smile of satisfaction.
