Driving around the last remaining twists of the Herefordshire country roads, the orange setting sun bathed the fields and hedgerows in a deep, warm glow.

The car-load of girls sighed collectively as we turned up a long beech-lined drive, at the end of which stood our home for the weekend, an impressive red brick Georgian building. No one could dispute the sheer idyll of its setting.

Ours was the last car to arrive, so we headed straight for the garden to catch the last rays. Sipping wine as the sun sank below the cornfield at the end of the garden, I surveyed the group - 15 girls, newly released form a three-hour car journey were already shrieking and cavorting on the freshly cut lawn.

Two months previously, I had been flattered when my old school-friend Donna had asked me to be her maid-of-honour. However, quickly I realised this was really a byword for ‘hen-do organiser’. Having never organised a hen night before I asked friends for advice.

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• Hens and stags continue to party

The reaction from most was scare stories of town centre calamities, exclusive nightclub guestlists leaving hens stranded with nowhere to party and horrific drunken accidents. One friend advised me to ‘never, never assume that the hen will want a stripper.”

The stripper she had organised succeeded in bringing her bride-to-be to tears with his over-active dance routine. Wise words indeed, and I was determined to make my maid-of-honour duties a success. I hatched a plan to cosset everyone away in a luxury country retreat - far far away from hazardous town centres. But, how to do it with style? And more importantly: on a budget?

Being the summer, I was convinced that most big country houses would have been booked up months ago. However, I was surprised how many had had last-minute cancellations and would offer a good weekend rate. It was also worth noting that many places would offer a 10 per cent discount, especially if an agreement was made to use one of their service providers for catering or activities.

I felt that for once the credit crunch had worked in my favour. One owner noted that ‘bookings are low this year. Families who normally book for at least two weeks over summer are cancelling and spending the time at home to save money’. This offered excellent bargaining opportunities for me.

The internet was great place to start searching for properties and I found a good number of sites dedicated to finding places to hold large house parties and bigger houses for rent. Of these, www.thebighouseparty.com, www.thebigdomain.com and www.groupaccommodation.com were all particularly helpful.

Those that were not so helpful tended to be sites that did not immediately make clear the size of a house or how many bedrooms it offered.

When looking for houses, it’s important to know what exactly facilities you need. With a firm checklist, I became adept at quickly scanning the sites for my hen needs.

I knew that I wanted the house to be somewhere rural and peaceful. It had to be somewhere big enough for everyone to have her own space; (essential, I thought, for a successful hen break). I also wanted large communal rooms for drinks and dinner plus an afternoon ‘grazia-tea-time’ room for relaxing in.

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