We’ve just returned from a very special holiday – staying at the farm where they filmed ITV’s The Darling Buds of May.

I’m a huge fan of the TV series and of the gorgeous quintet of books written by one of my favourite authors – H E Bates. They are my go-to viewing and reading if I ever need cheering up.

The ‘Darling Buds Farm’ near Bethersden in Kent was recently bought and renovated, enabling guests to stay in the main house, the oast house and the cart lodge as well as shepherds’ huts and annexes with names fans of the show will recognise like Edith and Angela Snow.

There are also many acres of beautiful Kent countryside to explore and we were thrilled to find the very buttercup meadow where a young Catherine Zeta Jones who played Mariette Larkin was chased by Philip Franks’s Mr Charlton, shouting, “Yes, yes, yes!”

As you can imagine, there was an awful lot of quoting during our stay and my beloved H E Bates books were never far away.

As Pop Larkin might say, it was the “perfick” little break.