I’ve just got back from an absolute cracker of a holiday in a stupendous holiday home tucked away in the Dales near Barnard Castle in County Durham, and honestly, the real magic wasn’t the cracking views or the cosy wood-burner – it was the quirky locals I got chatting to. You know, the sort of folk who make you feel like you’ve stumbled into a real-life sitcom.

First off, there was Derek, the farmer who owns the field next door. I’d wandered out for a mooch one morning, mug of tea in hand, when he trundled up in his battered Land Rover, sheepdog Maisie hanging out the window like she owned the place. “Reet grand mornin’, eh lad?” he bellowed, before launching into a yarn about how his prize tup (that’s a ram, for us townies) had once escaped and ended up in the Teesdale Way footpath, causing a right kerfuffle with ramblers. We ended up nattering for an hour about everything from Brexit’s effect on lamb prices to the best chippy in Darlington. Derek’s got this deadpan humour – “Lamb’s not daft, y’know. They’ve got more sense than politicians!” I laughed so hard I nearly spilled my tea. It was one of those chats that makes you realise how much bollocks we talk online, when face-to-face banter is pure gold.

Then, on a jaunt to the Bowes Museum in Barnard Castle – proper stunning, that place, with its Parisian grandeur smack in the middle of nowhere – I bumped into Sheila, a retired postie from nearby Staindrop. She was there with her knitting group, all perched on benches like a flock of chatty hens. “You staying at that posh barn conversion up t’ dale?” she clocked me straight away. Cue an epic chinwag over cream teas in the café. Sheila regaled me with tales of delivering post through blizzards in the ’80s, and how the village pub once had a ghost that only showed up during the beer festival. “Mind you,” she winked, “it’s nowt but the landlord’s dodgy homebrew!” Her mates chipped in with rival ghost stories from High Force waterfall, and I was in stitches. Proper warmed my cockles, that did – reminded me I need to slow down more often and just listen to people’s stories instead of doom-scrolling.

Even at the local Weardale Steam Railway trip – chuffing along those misty valleys is brilliant value – I got talking to Tom, the guard with a handlebar moustache like a wartime pilot. He reckoned the line’s haunted by Victorian navvies, and swore blind he’d heard phantom hammers one foggy night. “Don’t worry, love,” he said to my other half, “they only rattle chains if you’ve not bought a return ticket!” We swapped daft jokes all the way to Frosterley, and by the end, it felt like we’d known him years.

Staying in that holiday home – all beams, hot tub, and telly bigger than my lounge – was lush, but it was these characters who turned it into a holiday I won’t forget. Made me reflect on how, in our hectic lives, a bit of nattering with proper Durhanmites is the best tonic. If you’re after a break that’s more about laughs than selfies, get yourself up there. You’ll not regret it.