During half-term week we entertained a family of five from Chorleywood’s twin town of Dardilly just outside Lyons, and it has been a wonderful way to get to visit places we didn’t know ourselves.

Last Saturday, for instance, we visited the newly renovated Spitalfields Market in east London, which I now can’t wait to visit again "toute seule"; and on Sunday we did a whistle stop tour of some of the picturesque villages where Midsomer Murders was filmed (which the French know as the more easily pronounceable "Barnaby" after the series’ hero, DCI Tom Barnaby).

First we had coffee in the opulent drawing room of Hartwell House hotel just outside Aylesbury, where the exiled and impoverished but apparently still imperious Louis XVIII (of whom our guests had never heard) accepted the throne of France after the defeat of Napoleon in 1814.

Despite rocking up in our wellies and anoraks, we were treated as honoured guests, perhaps because of the French connection.

The maître d’hôtel even unlocked the library (where Louis signed the document) especially for us, though whether Louis actually returned home to claim his crown, he couldn’t say.

Then, in the best English tradition and because it was February after all, we picnicked in the car in the chocolate box village of Dinton, before stopping briefly in the market town of Thame and seeing the 14th Century courthouse in Long Crendon.

To my surprise, we discovered the owner of Long Crendon’s 15th Century Eight Bells pub, pictured, is former Chorleywood resident and Watford Grammar pupil Paul Mitchell, 41, who took over the pub in 2013.

Paul told me he has adopted "posh pork" as his signature dish, sourced from two rare breeds of pig bred at Long Crendon Manor farm.

It’s a delightful pub, with a thatched roof and an open fire inside, but best of all, since Christmas, Paul has been offering a ten per cent reduction on all food for key workers, such as nurses, teachers, police officers, emergency workers, and those in the armed forces or social services.

"We are incredibly well supported by our community and we wanted to give something back," he told me.

"Since we introduced this deal, people have come from all over to claim it and it is really appreciated."

I left hoping Paul counts HMP (that’s shorthand for members of Her Majesty’s Press, by the way, not prisoners) as "key" workers.