Planning a Holiday!
This year we WILL go on holiday and it WILL be a success. No more sitting in soggy tents in Scotland for a week with the rain pounding the canvas. Oh no! I want sunshine, I want dry clothes, I want kids activities (well, the kids do at least) and Horace and I want a break. I don’t want much do I?
Holidays in the old days! That’s me on the right by the way. Nice bowl haircut innit.
We need somewhere warm and cosy where we can spend quality family time together bickering.
It’s so hard to find somewhere that’s affordable though, with all the facilities that you need for active young children. I’m not sure where to start. It’s that time of year when everyone starts looking around for something and the travel agents start sharpening their claws.
‘You want a holiday outside of term time? Oh that’ll be three times the usual price Mrs Wilkinson.’
‘Oh erm….thanks. Does that include kids activities, breakfast and a free limo?’
‘No.’
I’m not jaded or anything. So, these are the options I’ve considered. Sharing a villa somewhere warm in the Costa-del-Packet and robbing a bank to pay for it for starters. That does actually sound lovely, but pricey (especially considering I’ll have to hire a get-away car and a crack team of bank robbers). Another option is getting abroad, but living in a tent for a week, preferably near a beach or a swimming pool. That seems a little more reasonable.
We’d like somewhere near attractions, such as zoos or prisons where we can put the kids behind bars if they misbehave.
Great uk summer breaks are possible I suppose. I just worry that the weather might ruin everything. The trick is to keep the kids happy, as long as the kids are contented, we’re onto a winner. If they’re climbing the walls looking for something to do, clamouring for friends and a non-existant beach, it’ll be well…..terrible. I must find something, and fast. Having said that, at places like Butlins they do have a lot of facilities indoors away from the wind, rain and hail. Maybe, just maybe, that’s a thought.
Ideally somewhere that the kids can run wild. We’ll just sit in the car with a MacDonalds and a coffee and watch.
Craft activities would be nice. If I didn’t have to organise them that’d be even better.
These adverts for Disney holidays make me laugh. ’Kids eat free!’ ’Kids go free’ ‘Kids love Mickey Mouse and will only love you if you sell a kidney to go on our holidays’ and all that. If I had a pound for every time my daughter has looked longingly at the TV and asked if she can go to Disneyworld, I’d be able to afford to go (she watches a lot of adverts). What they don’t tell you on the adverts is that you pay more for the adults to subsidise the kid’s places. Clever eh! Try explaining that to a 7 year old who is dazzled by fireworks and images of rollercoasters and endless ice-creams. Ho-Hum.
I’m running the risk of sounding like Mrs Angry here. It’s just so difficult trying to find something affordable and appropriate for our family. Where are you going? What are your plans? Help me!
This is a Butlins sponsored post – please give us a free holiday! I is panicking here.
We are in the same boat. But our head teacher is the understanding type and will allow us some time off school for good behaviour. So after May half term there are 2 teacher training days and we will take the other 3 days off and have a week away. Hopefully Majorca in a villa – no activities but a pool will entertain kids….
Couldn’t. be afforded in school hols though.
I want a few days in te rain in Scotland…..well I dont but I can just about afford it….lol
Think it has always been like this! What you need is a relative who lives somewhere “nice” and/or different – I had Grandparents who lived in Truro and two Great Uncles in Devon so we stayed with one or other every year sometimes we squeezed in a couple of holidays. Not therefore seaside holidays exactly but we had days at the beach, climbed on old castles or Dartmoor tors, rode on steam trains etc etc. I look back on it as one long sunny summer holiday which of course it couldn’t have been.
Dressing up in clothes from Grandma, getting up early to feed the birds, helping Grandpa in his garden, borrowing books from a friend of the family who was an English teacher, learning to swim in the rock pools, rolling down sand dunes, mahjong, canasta and many more memories of my childhood.
My own children spent most of their early years camping – we bought them a little tent they could put up on their own and share. They still talk about camping in the Lake District and our big French road trip.
Keep it simple and don’t worry about competing with their school friends who are going to Disney or the Carribean.
Reblogged this on brinkofbedlam.
I have the answer of course!
Even if you stay in the UK, it would cost nearly as much as it would to go on a cheap package holiday abroad. 2013 seems like a cold, windy, rainy washout so far in UK so camping may not be good unless theres a drastic change in weather.