Forget luxury escapes: a break is much more fun in a youth hostel

I've never been in a band. But I have been to a youth hostel with four babies, which is sort of the same thing. Everywhere we turned there was singing, selfies, strangers coming up to us in the street and women getting their boobs out - it was the Small Faces, but with actual small faces.

- Nell Frizzell

My God, how I love youth hostels. In all their strange, intergenerational, shared washing-up sponges and boot-room glory, they are the best of us. You can keep your sponsored hotel stays and luxury apartments as far as I'm concerned. Give me a fluorescent-lit kitchen with five electric hobs and a roll of stickers to label your milk any day.

Sharing a single room designed for eight people with three breastfeeding mothers and four - count them - four dribbling infants meant that our entire stay cost everyone just £40 ($55) a night, and I got to fall asleep to the soundtrack of polyphonic suckling. I had a sea view, a mattress on the floor; there was an en suite shower and a sink in which to wash out approximately 6kg of sand from my daughter’s bum cheeks.