Homes under the Hammer presenter, I’m a Celebrity...Get me out of here! contestant and columnist Martin Roberts reflects on idyllic Somerset summers

I can’t believe that it’s the start of another year and we look forward to all the things that the coming 12 months will bring.

I thought 2016 went pretty well and I hope it did for you too. For me, it was made by the lovely summer which we had.

Following the washout of summer 2015, I said to my wife that we’d give the first part of the summer a chance, but if it looked like gloomy weather was to prevail, I’d book us on a cheap getaway to the guaranteed sunshine.

I love this country and all its idiosyncratic weather, with hailstones in June and tropical beach weather in late October. But there’s some times when you just want it to pull its finger out and deliver.

And that’s in the summer holiday period.

Maybe, it’s rose tinted spectacles, but overall, I have happy and sun-filled memories of summer from my childhood. Summers of building dens and playing outside from dawn ‘til dusk.

I’m not sure if it was really like this, but it feels like it was.

And I want my children to experience the same. So we will carry on spending our summers in the UK.

The sliding of the pound post Brexit apparently had a very positive impact on overseas visitors to the UK, with record numbers being reported both in the cities and countryside.

It’s nice to think that those visitors will have gone away with the best possible image of Britain. Of blue skies and cartoon white clouds. Of fields of freshly harvested wheat. Of picture postcard villages and seaside towns. Of world class gardens and stately homes. Not of grey skies and groups of bedraggled fellow visitors in ‘pac-a-macs’.

I imagine Somerset benefitted from this increase in visitors.

Perhaps the word will now go back to the far and wide about all the wonderful things our county has to offer.

For more information about Martin, his property training courses and his property and children’s books, visit his website. You can follow him on Twitter as well at @TVMartinRoberts.

Martin’s new weekly property radio show is on TalkRadio every Saturday morning- broadcast live from his treehouse in Somerset from 11am-1pm, repeated Sundays 5-7pm. Listen on DAB or online at TalkRadio.co.uk.