I’m lying in my private poolside cabana, white curtains shading me from the late afternoon sun as a casually-dressed pool butler brings me my third cocktail of the day in a pink retro cool-box. Beside us, a gaggle of thirty-somethings are toasting their friend’s engagement under a candy-striped parasol while a tanned, young-looking couple are doing a photo shoot against the pool and azure-blue sea.
It’s easy to forget I’m not in Barcelona or some chic new beach club in the Med, until I remember we spent our morning driving here through leafy west London and the New Forest and not making our way through the hoardes at Heathrow.
