Where to Travel in November

Somewhere warm in November, from Britain, comes down to how long you are prepared to sit on a plane. Tenerife is about four and a half hours and keeps London's clock. Dubai is seven, and four hours ahead. Cape Town is eleven or twelve, overnight, but only two ahead, so the night on the plane is the whole of the adjustment.

November falls in the best months of all three, and each step further buys a warmer sea or a longer evening, never both. Dubai's sea is 27-28°C and the sun has gone by about half past five. Cape Town keeps the light past seven, over an Atlantic of 15-16°C. Tenerife's south coast, the nearest, sits between them with a 22°C sea and no jet lag at all. Which to book comes down to which you would rather do without.

Tenerife

Stay south. Teide holds the trade-wind cloud on the north of the island, and in November the south coast gets about 25°C by day, 18°C at night and six and a half hours of sun a day. Its 26 mm of rain arrives on about two days, so an umbrella is mostly ballast.

Royal Hideaway Corales Suites is on that coast at La Caleta, on Playa La Enramada, a beach of black sand. We have been twice, in January and in March, never in November, and the case for it starts with the weather, good all year round and four hours or so from London. The other reason is the rooms. All 114 are suites, and they are enormous. In March ours was the two-bedroom Deluxe Suite with Pool: 100 square metres, a kitchen, and a heated pool of its own on a terrace over the Atlantic, which is the ocean view with the heating on.

Bahía del Duque, also on Costa Adeje, is a colonial village of pastel low-rise buildings that went up in 1993, so the colonial part is a matter of style. It steps down through tiered gardens to Playa del Duque, a sand beach looking along the coast to La Gomera. The six pools are heated, the kids' club takes children from three, and the hotel runs guided trips up into Teide National Park, a little over an hour's drive inland, to hike and to look at the stars.

Gran Hotel Taoro is the case for going north anyway. It has stood in Parque Taoro above Puerto de la Cruz since 1890, looking out to the Atlantic one way and inland to Teide the other, which is to say at the mountain keeping the cloud on it. November there is about 20°C by day, with 81 mm of rain over eight days and less sun. The three pools are heated and open all year, and what the cloud pays for is the gardens and the old town.

Dubai

Dubai in November is properly hot: about 31°C by day and 18-20°C at night, nine hours or so of sun and next to no rain. The sea, at 27-28°C, is the warmest of the three by a distance. The catch is the clock. The sun goes down at about half past five all month, so the beach day ends at teatime and the evening is long and dark. November is also when the busiest, dearest season begins.

We stayed at Sofitel Dubai The Palm, on the East Crescent of Palm Jumeirah, from late January into February, as a family, on half board in a Junior Suite with a sea view. We went to Dubai for the weather. The hotel had a shorter brief: keep us entertained, feed us well, let us sleep properly and fit us all into one big room. It did all four, and the staff were better still. Next time, though, we would stay in JBR or the Marina.

That is where One&Only Royal Mirage is, its gardens running down to a kilometre of private sand along Jumeirah Beach. Its sister, One&Only The Palm, sits at the far end of the West Crescent, low-rise and Andalusian round courtyards and fountains, with 450 metres of its own beach and the Marina towers across the water. STAY, its restaurant, has two Michelin stars, the kids' club takes four- to eleven-year-olds, and a free boat crosses to the Royal Mirage for anyone who wants the Marina closer than the view.

Dubai is for people who go on holiday to swim, and for families whose evenings end early anyway.

Cape Town and the Winelands

Cape Town is the long flight with the short time difference: eleven or twelve hours overnight, into a clock two hours ahead of London's. Days are 22-24°C, with about ten hours of sun and not much rain. And they are long: fourteen hours of daylight, the sunset sliding from 19:14 to 19:42 as the month goes on. The sea is the price. At 15-16°C the Atlantic is colder in November than in any month from December to June, and it reaches 20°C only in January and February.

All five of our stays here were in March. Sea Five has seven rooms in Camps Bay, between the Atlantic and the Twelve Apostles, 300 metres from the beach. Whether its one pool is heated is worth asking before booking for November. POD Camps Bay, a short walk from the same beach, takes nobody under twelve. Its pool is heated, by one account, and the cocktail bar on the deck looks over the beach, which at 15-16°C is a fair way to take the Atlantic.

Kensington Place has eight rooms in Higgovale, on the slopes above the City Bowl, with the city and the Atlantic below and terraces facing Table Mountain, whose trailheads are a walk away. There is no beach, which in November costs less than it would in February. It was our base for the city, and its small pool is where we sat with a book in the morning.

The Winelands are in high season from October to February. Le Franschhoek Hotel & Spa, an hour's drive from Cape Town, is a set of Cape Dutch buildings with vineyards and mountains round them, and gives its guests access to around twenty local wine estates, which is more than most stays will get through. L'Avenir Country Lodge is a lodge on a working wine estate just outside Stellenbosch, below the Simonsberg, with a cellar door where the tasting is complimentary. We had a Classic Room and then an Icon Room, and rosé by the rim-flow pool over the estate's lakes.

Cape Town is for grown-ups who measure a holiday in evenings, and for anyone who swims in pools anyway. Its UV index in November is 11, which the scale calls extreme, against Dubai's 6: of the two, the cooler is the one that burns.