Escaping the Winter Blues: or at least Less Miserable…
There’s a particular shade of grey that descends over Britain in January. Not the chic, minimalist grey of a Scandinavian kitchen, but the sort of grey that feels like it’s leeching vitamin D directly out of your bones. And, as you sit there in a dressing gown that has acquired the texture of stale bread, hammering away at your laptop, you begin to think: “Perhaps there are better places to do this.”
After all, remote working wasn’t invented so we could sit in Croydon eating Hobnobs under a daylight lamp. It was supposed to be glamorous — sipping flat whites, tapping away at your laptop with the sea as your screensaver. And so, you start Googling. Where should you go?
Tenerife – Sunshine with a Side of Volcano
Let’s start with Tenerife. It’s got everything Britain doesn’t: sunlight, affordable wine, and lava. The Wi-Fi actually works, and you won’t need to factor in a seven-hour time lag when scheduling a call with people back home. It’s the sweet spot: you can work all day, finish up, then take a smug stroll along the beach while your friends are scraping ice off their windscreens. And yes, places like Nomadhut will exist precisely for this — so you can call it “networking” instead of “holidaying”. There’s other places like Nine Coliving’s historic La Orotava house to Cactus Coliving’s restored valley villa, Tenerife is packed with options for remote workers — and in January 2026, Nomadhut will join that list, offering a warehouse-style space for creatives and founders.
Lisbon – Cafés and Custard Tarts
Lisbon is the darling of the digital nomad set. It’s got cobbled streets, charming views, and enough coworking cafés to make you feel guilty if you don’t order three pastéis de nata per hour. Time zone? The same as Britain. Which means you can suffer through the weekly strategy call without setting an alarm for 3am. It’s a little bit colder than the canaries and I noticed it when I had a coworking space for 3 years there.
Bali & Southeast Asia – Paradise at a Price
Now, Bali. Glorious, yes. Spiritual, yes. But also: sticky. You’ll be glistening constantly, like a glazed ham left out in the sun. Add to that the time zone — eight hours ahead of Britain — and you’ll find yourself doing “deep work” at midnight while fending off a mosquito the size of a pigeon. Sure, the infinity pools are nice, but there’s only so much enlightenment you can find while sweating into your laptop keyboard.
Southeast Asia more broadly suffers from the same paradox: cheap and beautiful, but you’re permanently either asleep when everyone else is awake, or awake when everyone else is asleep. It’s like living in Narnia, only the wardrobe leads to Zoom calls at absurd hours. And the price of the flights to get there, also it’s not the most flexible place to be if you need to skip home for a meeting or a friends birthday.
The Canary Islands’ Quieter Corners
Gran Canaria, La Palma, La Gomera — quieter, sunnier, and crucially still in the right time zone. You get all the smugness of working remotely without the horror of discovering you’ve accidentally scheduled a “quick check-in” for 2am.
The Moral of the Story
If you’re lucky enough to work from anywhere, don’t waste it shivering under a blanket in Stoke. Choose somewhere sunny, somewhere connected, and — ideally — somewhere where you don’t have to synchronise your calendar with people in another dimension. Tenerife, Lisbon, even the quieter Canaries — these are the sensible options.
Bali and Southeast Asia? By all means visit, but don’t pretend you’re being productive. That’s not remote work, it’s performance sweating.
