As it was nudging 33 degrees in the shade, the last thing I wanted to drink was a hot toddy.

But on Sri Lanka, the island of smiles off the toe of India, toddy is a comfort drink of the poor and needy. Strictly in the interests of research, I tried this original tropical version.

Tapped from a single shoot at the very top of a palm tree, it is collected in ‘toddy-pots’, fermented in three hours and drunk raw.

Some goes to distillers and becomes a rather fierce coconut spirit called Arrack, which I also tried. It made me cough and I spent the rest of the afternoon asleep under a tree. So much for research!

Although Sri Lanka has just celebrated 60 years of independence from British rule, our influence is evident wherever you go. Tea plantations, rubber, roads (such as they are) and railways were all left by the British and gratefully inherited, even though one newspaper I saw described independence as “freedom from the British oppressors”.

In one inland township, steam road-rollers made in Peterborough had been left on display at the roadside. Most people speak some English, and neatly-turned-out schoolchildren practise language skills with holidaymakers.

My base with Saga Holidays, the beachside four-star all-inclusive Club Palm Bay Hotel, was the jewel in the crown of a sprawling fishing village offshoot of Marawila township.

We were an hour and a half’s hair-raising drive from the airport and the capital Colombo, but in a very different world. Many Saga clients are mature adventurers, couples and singles, keen to see the world. Excursions in the package took in fishing markets, fishing trips and a Buddhist temple.

At Pinnawela elephant orphanage they were bottle-feeding baby elephants after the daily river bath.

The English influence remains at meal times, too. Chops and steak, together with rice and curry, are favourites.

Guests stay in air-conditioned bungalows in the hotel grounds, with fans in the ceiling and a liberal supply of bottled water available. A few creepy-crawlies apart, there were no flies, no mozzies and no sign on land of the water monitors (5ft-long lizards) which thrive in the lagoons.

I loved the place and the people, and would return at the drop of a very large sun hat.

Factfile

* Saga Holidays offer 14 nights’ full-board at Club Palm Bay Hotel, Sri Lanka from £1,349 in December, flying from Heathrow. No single-room supplement on most dates, subject to availability.

* Scheduled Emirates flights are available from Manchester.

* Saga Holidays reservations: 0800 0565880 and saga.co.uk/ travelshop.