Competition: Win a wintry weekend in Wales worth £940

Enjoy a gathering of friends or family on us… Fforest is giving away a two-night stay in its fantastic farmhouse in Pembrokeshire

The festive season serves as a reminder of the simple pleasures of getting together with family or friends. Enter our Christmas competition and you could be doing it all over again, only this time in luxury in west Wales.

Tŷ Fforest is a Georgian farmhouse, restored in 2015 with a swish, ski lodge-style interior. This is a luxurious retreat for families, full of cosy corners and gathering spaces, wrapped in thick slate walls. It has a large slate-floor kitchen with massive inglenook fireplace and a woodfired oven. Its suite, two doubles, family room and bunkroom sleeps up to 14 people.

Out in the country
The farmhouse is the newest addition to Fforest farm, a 200-acre estate bordering the Teifi marshes nature reserve and Teifi gorge, and a few minutes’ drive away from the town of Cardigan as well as the wilds of the Pembrokeshire coast.

Fforest farm has lots of accommodation, sleeping two to 14, from domed tents to cosy crog lofts – all designed to engage with the delights of outdoor living. In Cardigan itself, there are one- and two-bedroomed granary lofts. These smart apartments border the river, with views across to the castle.

The properties lend themselves to cosy gatherings: no wonder, then, that Fforest is offering hygge weekends, seizing on the Danish idea of simple, everyday happiness and togetherness. Blankets and logs for the fire are provided, and you can order a hygge hamper, full of local produce. The Simple Things readers can save 10% on a hygge weekend, too. 

coldatnight.co.uk, 01239 623633

HYGGE WEEKENDS FOR LESS 
10% exclusive discount at Fforest: To book a hygge weekend in Tŷ Fforest, use code SIMPLETY.
To book a hygge weekend in any other Fforest accommodation, use code SIMPLE10.

COMPETITION DETAILS
Competition closes 21 January 2017. The winner can take a two-night break at Tŷ Fforest in February or March 2017 or from 1 November to 18 December 2017, if available. The prize doesn’t cover any travel, expenses or insurance, and you can’t transfer it or magic it into cash. Now all you need to decide is who to take.

ENTER NOW

More competitions: 

More from the December issue:

Get hold of your copy of this month's The Simple Things - buy, download or subscribe

View the sampler here.

Wisdom: Hygge and happiness, a TED talk by Meik Wiking

Meik Wiking is a happiness guru – an advocate for hygge and a collector of smiles. Turn to page 38 of October's The Simple Things for his take on why enjoying togetherness is what makes him, and the Danes as a nation, the happiest in the world.

In his self-created role of director of The Happiness Research Institute, Meik has been running projects and studies, workshops and round table discussions on happiness. He travels the world meeting with governments and organisations, and exploring how everything from social media use to job satisfaction can affect happiness levels. He even keeps a notebook in which he records the frequency of smiles in random isolation in every city he visits. Some of the highest levels he has seen are in Mexico, while the lowest have been in Latvia and Poland. He says he still needs to do more study in the UK, but so far it’s not looking good. What makes people happy is now what gets Meik up in the mornings and, as he told a TED Talk that he gave on ‘The Dark Side of Happiness’ this year*, what makes people unhappy, depressed and suicidal, can keep him awake at night. Incidentally, it’s not true that the Danes have the highest rate of suicide (they rank somewhere in the middle). 

Watch his TEDxCopenhagen talk now: The Dark Side of Happiness

More from the October issue:

Read more Wisdom posts:

Get hold of your copy of this month's The Simple Things - buy, download or subscribe

View the sampler here

Recipe: Sea salt hot chocolate

This deliciously thick hot chocolate is the perfect combination of sweet and salty, and was deemed beautiful enough to be our November cover star. You can make it with milk, white or dark chocolate and adjust the salt to your own taste.

For a salted caramel hot chocolate and a richer flavour, use a caramel chocolate such as Caramac.

Sea salt hot chocolate

SERVES 2

250 ml milk
250 ml double cream
100 g dark chocolate (70% cocoa solids), chopped
1 tbsp caster sugar
1⁄2 tsp salt (or to taste)
1 egg yolk

1 Place the milk, cream and chopped chocolate in a saucepan with the sugar and salt, and heat over low heat until the chocolate has melted, whisking all the time.

2 Taste to see whether you need to add a little more salt for an extra salty kick. Remove from the heat and whisk in the egg yolk to thicken the hot chocolate.

3 Pass it through a sieve, then pour into two cups and serve immediately. 

Read more:

From the November issue

Buttered bourbon mulled cider

Chocolate recipes

Fancy sea salt hot chocolate, cinder toffee and firepit cakes, a celebration of toast plus ways to tell a good story around the fire, subversive cross stitch and how to keep your herbs going over winter? Oh and bibliotherapy, crafternoons and a poem about beautiful librarians. 

All this in our November COMFORT issue. You'll find us in even more Waitrose and Sainsbury's stores this month plus WH Smiths, Tesco and good independents. We're on sale now somewhere near you.

November's The Simple Things is out now - buy, download or subscribe.