IT’S a major truism that sometimes the best things in life can be right under your nose.

The trick is to spot them.

I’ve lost count, for example, of the number of times I’ve walked past The Arden Hotel in Stratford-upon-Avon and thought ‘‘Wouldn’t it be nice to wake up so close to the River Avon and to be based right next door to the RSC and Bancroft Gardens’’.

All of these things came to pass when fitting in a half-term holiday further away seemed impossible.

So we compromised.

Instead of spending half of the holiday stuck in a traffic jam burning fuel, we arrived in Stratford within an hour and were instantly on holiday at a luxury hotel which was impressively restored only last year.

Under such circumstances, our reduced two-day break suddenly doubled in value to feel more like four – with the bonus of fewer clothes to wash upon our return home!

To stay in Stratford at a place like The Arden is to see a different, slower side to the town, where merely walking through the hotel’s garden at dawn becomes a wonderfully novel experience.

To see the RSC shrouded in mist before it gave way to brilliant sunshine was startling. In other words, I realised I was looking at a familiar landmark more through the fresh eyes of a foreign visitor from the other side of the world than I was through my own.