PRU NEEDS drugging and binding to be taken on a proper holiday, but enjoys it when she gets there. We’ve fallen into the habit of getting family and friends together and taking a Landmark Trust property for a week each year. It’s not far away — in Surrey, actually: a lovely big Lutyens house on the Evelyn estate, with a Gertrude Jekyll garden, and a croquet lawn. It hasn’t got television, but there’s a skittle alley; a terrible cousin usually wins that. We sit around and chat, play games, go for walks or to the pub.

The other regular holidays we have are on our narrow boat. You travel at 4mph and it’s a wonderful way of getting away from everything. We’ve been up as far as Ripon, in North Yorkshire, and to Llangollen. That involves going over the Pontcysyllte aqueduct, which is quite scary because all you can see on one side is the River Dee, 120ft below — and the whole structure shudders with the vibration of the engine. Pru often finds it’s a good time to go down below and do some cooking.

There was an occasion when I took the whole cast of Twelve Angry Men on the River Avon and got stuck on the top of a weir all day. If the river’s running hard it’s sometimes difficult to turn accurately into the lock. We were teetering on the edge — the barrier that comes up with the rising tide caught us by about two inches. Most people opened another bottle of wine. Kevin Whately and I stood bravely on the stern, pretending that things were all right. Finally, a lorry and a canoeist got us off.

I suffer from what I call “Betjeman syndrome” — shedding a tear for things that have been swept aside in the pace of modern life. So I should mention my paddle steamer, the Waverley, the only remaining seagoing example in the country. We go on her as often as we can. I call it “my” paddle steamer because I was one of the original members of the Paddle Steamer Preservation Society, which bought the ship from the breaker’s yard for £1 in 1973. She’s smashing. Every year we go over to Lundy for a church service, and those enthusiasts who can sing a bit make up the choir.

Every second year, we go away for Christmas. One year, we spent Christmas Day in a game park in India. Because we were English, they put cotton wool on the trees, gave us curried turkey and played Pat Boone records on an old gramophone. It was great.

Just before last Christmas, we did HMS Pinafore on stage in Australia and New Zealand. New Zealand doesn’t have a unity like Australia. It looks like a kaleidoscopic collection of different kinds of country. You can be going along a road thinking: “Oh, this looks like the Yorkshire moors,” then you turn a corner and there’s Mount Cook, snowbound. The next thing you know, you’re in the Black Forest; from there you’re in a semitropical jungle with date palms. I went in the mid-1980s and it was a bit sleepy. Now, it’s very vibrant. And people are trying to do the right thing politically. They said to Mr Blair: Sorry, as you no longer buy our lamb and butter, we don’t see why we should send troops to Iraq.

Occasionally, we get asked to sing for our supper on cruise ships, and last year we were lucky to have a beautiful week with Swan Hellenic, going down the Adriatic from Venice to Athens, calling at Dubrovnik and Corinth. I have a great interest in theatrical buildings. To try out the acoustics at Epidaurus is extraordinary; you’re in this 6,000-seat open auditorium, yet a whisper can be heard from anywhere.

I look at travel as a jumping-off point, and I lay myself open to surprises. For that, I love rail travel. I went across America on Amtrak a couple of times — from Chicago to San Francisco, then back from Los Angeles to New Orleans.

On the eastern journey you’re looking at this eight-inch-high scrubland, unpeopled and uncharacterised by any growth at all, with a hot sun beaming down from a dark blue sky. You think: “That’s a bit boring; I might go to sleep.” Then you wake up and there’s a man in a parka shovelling snow from the front of his garage in Kansas City. You really feel like Rip Van Winkle.

I stopped off in Albuquerque because I specially wanted to see Santa Fe. It’s supposed to be of surprising beauty, but it was absolute kitsch. But, even if you have a bad time generally, something always makes it worthwhile. For instance, I met somebody there who was partly responsible for my getting a play on. And just looking at somewhere different, or being where people think in a different way, is very good for us.

• Timothy West talked to Caroline Rees