We're all familiar with those "last day of holiday blues". The internal push and pull of wanting to enjoy your break up to the very last minute while knowing you'll soon be crammed on a plane next to a hungover stag-do with barely enough in your account for a £7 bottle of Ryanair wine and a tube of Pringles.

I’m currently experiencing something similar to the last day of holiday blues. If you've been reading along these last months, you'll know that I declared this my year of travel. I decided, after a period of being very ill, that one of the few things I'd never regret doing was packing a bag, getting on a plane, train or boat, and going somewhere new.

I've been lucky enough to travel through Japan and Korea, Sri Lanka, Mauritius, Portugal, Germany, Denmark and Sweden as a result. Indeed, Sweden captured my heart so fully that I came home and insisted my whole family move there. And while we're incredibly excited for Fika, a Scandinavian Christmas - even if it includes pickled herring - and singing The Bridge’ theme tune as we cross the Øresund, it marks the end of my travels. One of the stipulations for my residency is that I stay, relatively, put in Sweden’s borders. So, while my travel days will never be entirely behind me, I am having that sense of an ending.

It has occurred to me, however, that perhaps I'm looking at this all wrong. That with a little thought and gratitude this could be a time for joy just like those last days of a holiday can. Because over the last year I’ve become a sort of professional traveller and I’ve learnt ways to stave off those last-day miseries. Contrary to walking around in the doldrums, thinking about the pile of washing waiting, that deadline you’re getting back to, or wondering if the cat will have staged a dirty protest on the sofa in your absence (spoiler: it always will have), the last day can be the perfect day of your holiday.

Read more by Kerry Hudson

There are a few keys to this: first is that you leave the morning open. That doesn’t mean you should pack it with an itinerary of tourist sites or museums but that you allow yourself time to wander around and remember why you wanted to go there in the first place. The very act of it being unstructured is what makes it such a beautiful day. Besides, by the last day, no matter how exotic your location, you'll be more relaxed. Familiar with enough of the language to greet people warmly. You’ll know the areas that you like best, perhaps you will go back to a bakery and have one last piece of that delicious cake or you'll return to the shop and buy something small and beautiful that you've been thinking about all week.

One of my favourite things to do on the last day of a trip is to go to the supermarket. Again, it isn’t something you might make time for in a packed itinerary of more notable sites but it is somewhere where you can truly get a sense of local life and it costs nothing.

If you do have a few euros left you can pick up some local food. There is nothing nicer than cooking up a risotto, knowing you brought the rice and Parmesan from Venice itself, or cooking a curry with Sri Lankan spices that you carried all the way home. It’s a really cheap way of bringing a piece of your holiday destination back into your everyday life. Similarly, if you can stretch to some snacks for your colleagues, friends or family they might be much more interested in the great tapas you had or how you almost died on a tuktuk if they're also munching on an excellent biscuit at the same time.

Finally, once you get to the airport, allow yourself one final drink - if you're a drinking woman, which I am - and have a gently-sozzled think about what made you grateful and appreciative for that holiday and all the things you're going home to. I used to be the first person to scoff at anyone I overheard declaring: "I'm just looking forward to a cup of tea and my own bed’". But I have to admit, as the years have fallen away like dominoes, I look forward to those things too. I like getting back to my cat, even while she resolutely ignores me. And while that cup of tea in my bed that’s full of toast crumbs isn’t quite as good as the first cup of tea after giving birth, it’s pretty close.

In the last year, I’ve seen so many people in departure lounges at airports with faces like a bulldog chewing a wasp, full of resentment for the fact their holiday is over, and dreading their return to everyday life. And I've always thought what a waste it is to not simply try and enjoy every minute, or to use that time to reflect on why it is that you are not so happy to go back to your everyday life.

Perhaps that last day of the holiday is an opportunity to see what you might want to change if you could, so that the following year, when you're flying home with a suitcase full of straw donkeys and tie-dye beach cover-ups, you're excited to get back home.

Of course, this is all easier said than done, and I am having my own sort of post holiday blues as my year of travel comes to an end, but I am grateful for every experience I had, even the one where I was taken in an ambulance from Heathrow to spend five days in an NHS Hilton after eating a dodgy wheel schnitzel in Colombo. And I'm excited to make my new less-adventurous Swedish life an exciting one too. Though hopefully with less food poisoning.

Kerry Hudson is an award-winning, best-selling novelist and memoirist and a member of the British Guild of Travel Writers. You can find her on Instagram and on Threads @ThatKerryHudson