My Favourite Holiday: Snow or sun, writer Jane Fallon embraces all the Scandi seasons

Copenhagen, Denmark on the Nyhavn Canal. (iStock)

JANE FALLON was a producer on EastEnders and then brought This Life and Teachers to our screens.

She gave it all up to become a writer, with Getting Rid Of Matthew becoming a bestseller. Her eighth book Faking Friends (Michael Joseph £7.99) about female friendship gone horribly wrong is out on January 11.

Jane, 57, now lives between London and New York with her partner, Ricky Gervais.

I’M really not one for beach holidays.

I go somewhere hot and enjoy it for a day and then start getting bored and irritated and looking for something else to do.

So Scandinavia is my go-to.

Just in the past few years I’ve been to Stockholm, Copenhagen, Gothenburg and Oslo.

They’re all quite expensive but we can’t often get a couple of weeks off, just a couple of days, so it’s not ridiculous.

What appeals about Scandinavia is that they don’t just cope with the weather they have, they really have fun.

We get a bit of snow or freezing temperatures and the whole country grinds to a halt. Over there people still eat and drink outside in bars and cafes with permanent heaters and blankets.

And during the short summers they really embrace the time and make the most of it.

When I go I always have a map full of notes of places I want to see.

I really like to have a picture of the place in my mind – so much so that I once helped a taxi driver in Lisbon who’d taken a wrong turn despite it being my first visit to the city.

I don’t do an itinerary, I just want to have options depending on the weather.

But I do make A and B lists of things I definitely want to see and others that I’d like to catch if time allows or if the weather turns bad.

In Stockholm I really love Gamla Stan, the Old Town.

Like most of the city it’s surrounded by water. It has the most gorgeous cobbled streets, including one where you can reach out and touch the walls on both sides.

And although it is obviously somewhere a lot of tourists go, it really doesn’t feel like that and the shops are full of character.

Meanwhile Oslo has a really beautiful harbour development with a lovely art gallery at the end of it which is always nice to wander round.