Christmas 2007 is now over and yes, despite all my fears, it was a good Christmas. We spent time with family and friends, no one argued, the turkey was delicious and the cat wasn't sick! What more could I ask for?

Well........, it sounds terribly indulgent I know, but actually I could do with a quiet and peaceful holiday away from everyone. Long walks, bracing sea air, not too much to eat and somewhere cosy where I can curl up and read all those wonderful books I was given for Christmas.

December is the one time of the year when I am likely to go into major depression. Minor signs appear towards the end of September as the supermarket shelves fill with Christmas cards and garishly painted boxes of chocolate biscuits. By the end of October my mood, like the days, gets darker as mince pies, Christmas nuts and wreaths of holly are added to those yawning Christmas shelves.

By now I am dreading the phone ringing and those inevitable words: “Have you any plans for Christmas?” or worse still “It would be nice to see you over Christmas”. Urghhhhhhhhhh!

December is the one time of the year when I am likely to go into major depression. Minor signs appear towards the end of September as the supermarket shelves fill with Christmas cards and garishly painted boxes of chocolate biscuits. By the end of October my mood, like the days, gets darker as mince pies, Christmas nuts and wreaths of holly are added to those yawning Christmas shelves.

By now I am dreading the phone ringing and those inevitable words: “Have you any plans for Christmas?” or worse still “It would be nice to see you over Christmas”. Urghhhhhhhhhh!

A single row of assorted cottages stands sentinel against the ravages of the North Sea whose wild and wondrous waves crash relentlessly against the shifting shingle bank. Here the Alde and Ore estuary reaches the sea, its eastern bank a narrow shingle spit running northwards past Orford to Aldeburgh.

Despite sometimes alluded to as The Esplanade or The Parade, the main path that runs, with its continuations, for some 2 miles at the very edge of Aldeburgh's beach is modestly called Crag Path. Dame Millicent Fawcett, the campaigner for women's suffrage born in Aldeburgh in 1847, says it was not always called that. In her autobiographical 'What I Remember' she wrote, "I remember walking along the crag path at Aldeburgh - we always resisted with vehemence any Cockney attempt to call it The Esplanade, The Parade, or any such name."

Perhaps one of the greatest musical festivals in the world; the inspiration for The Aldeburgh Festival came in August 1947 when Benjamin Britten, Peter Pears, Eric Crozier and a group of around forty British artists - the English Opera Group - were travelling across Europe performing Benjamin Britten’s operas Albert Herring and The Rape of Lucretia to packed audiences in Belgium, Luxembourg, France and Switzerland.

A delightful five mile walk over heaths, through woods, and beside farmland with magnificent views over the Alde Estuary between the village of Snape and the coastal town of Aldeburgh.

Until a few hundred years ago the village of Snape was far larger than Aldeburgh, perhaps the reason for the well trodden path which runs between the two. Called The Sailors Path it gave seaman access to Aldeburgh, then a centre for both local and offshore fishing, boat building and of course a certain amount of smuggling.

In 1846 Ipswich and Bury St Edmunds were linked to London by the new railways. The East Suffolk line now runs from Ipswich to Lowestoft, with a number of direct trains from Liverpool Street, London, each day. The first section of the line was opened in 1854 joining Halesworth to Beccles; five years later it was extended to Woodbridge, from where Eastern Counties Railway trains travelled to Ipswich and then to London.