The Gallery: Travel - and why travelling with kids doesn’t have to be hard work

Tara Cain at Sticky Fingers has given us Travel as the category for this week's Gallery.  I decided that this would be a good opportunity to tell you about one of the MOST successful experiences we've had travelling with our children. Couldn't limit it to one pic though.
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Our family holidays have largely fallen into two categories – travelling abroad to stay with far flung family or going somewhere that offers an all inclusive meal plan plus kids club so that my husband and I get a break from the 24/7 job of being a parent.

However, this Easter, we decided to go to a self-catering gîte in the French countryside. Ordinarily, I wouldn’t classify being in the countryside, cooking, cleaning and looking after children a holiday. It too closely resembles my everyday life.

But I really wanted to explore a bit more of France and figured that we’d probably have better weather there than at home and as long as it wasn’t hugely expensive, we could still have a ‘proper’ holiday in the summer holidays.

I have worked with child friendly holiday family specialists Tots to Travel for five years, but have yet to go on one of their holidays. But this year I decided it was high time I sampled what I'd been promoting for years (please note, I paid for this holiday, it wasn't a freebie so I'm reviewing this as a real customer).

After browsing the website, I found the perfect spot in Belle Gites, a cluster of five family friendly gîtes in Charente Maritime, where there would be other children to keep my two sons (7 and 5) entertained. And it offered home cooked meals, was near places I wanted to visit and was very affordable.

The courtyard at Belle Gites

My holiday decision was reaffirmed with the smooth booking process and excellent customer service. I wanted to stay for one night more than the allotted 7 nights, and that was efficiently arranged. Within minutes of booking, I received a call from the home owner who gave me even more information on the property, what to bring, how to get there and what we could expect the weather to be like. A great personal touch – it felt like we were going to stay with friends, rather than on an anonymous holiday complex.

We opted to go by ferry to Caen and drive the five hours to the Charente Maritime where the property was situated, rather than flying into La Rochelle which was the alternative. It was an easy journey on fast, mostly traffic free toll roads.

Small boys enjoying pain au chocolat on the ferry

On arrival, the kids thought Christmas had come early when they saw everything that was waiting for them to play with. In the courtyard there was table football, ping pong, basketball, darts, deck quoits, skittles, board games, countless bikes of all sizes and much more. But that was just the start. 

Just some of the kit available for us to use

The huge grounds also had a heated swimming pool with plenty of swimming toys, a zip wire, volley ball court, full size football pitch, mini tennis/badminton court, pirate ship sandpit, climbing frame, swings, trampoline, Little Tikes houses and ride ons, and a pet corner with chickens that the children could feed.

The lovely pool - which we swam in despite it only being April

Full size football pitch and volleyball/tennis



Kids climbing frame and trampoline





Perfect for toddlers - sandpit and playhouses

 Within minutes of arrival, our children had gone exploring, leaving us to check out our property, complete with welcome basket of essential foods and wine. We’d gone for Gîte Safran, one of five gîtes on site all clustered around the central courtyard. It had two beautifully decorated bedrooms (one double, one twin), with a bathroom between the two, and an open plan kitchen, dining room and sitting room all tastefully furnished and scrupulously clean. It was set back from the other gîtes, but had outside tables for al fresco dining on both sides – one overlooking the swimming pool and grounds, the other the courtyard – giving us privacy yet still being very sociable.

Gite Safran

Our hosts Michelle and Paul were immediately welcoming and introduced their children Sol and Safia to our boys. We also met the one other family staying in one of the other gîtes with their three boys.

Our lovely hosts

With a troop of small boys to charge around with, dens to build and intricate games of goodies vs baddies to play, we didn’t see our children for the next few days, except when their grumbling tummies brought them back for our al fresco lunches of crusty bread, creamy cheese and salty ham. This left my husband and I free to lounge next to the pool in the unseasonably warm high twenties temperatures, or take turns going for long bike rides through the undulating fields and vineyards.

A game of goodies v baddies going on in the trees

On his way to the den in the woods with treasure

We’d chosen the gîtes partly because of the location. Just a five minute bike ride to the local village for fresh bread and croissants, 10 minute drive to St Jean d’Angely, named as one of France’s 100 most beautiful villages, 10 minutes to Saintes with its ancient Roman ruins, 20 minutes from Cognac with fabulous tours of Cognac houses, 25 minutes to the beach and 45 minutes to La Rochelle with its cosmopolitan vibe.

The harbour fort at La Rochelle

La Rochelle Port

We visited all of these places and while the children enjoyed them, they would have preferred to stay at Belle Gites every single day. And it’s easy to understand why. The sleepy French village with its quiet country lanes made it safe enough for them to ride their bikes unaccompanied by an adult. They could explore the acres of woodland playing imaginative games. They had complete freedom to run wild and returned home each evening filthy, exhausted but utterly happy. As parents, we could genuinely relax, knowing they were safe and having the time of their lives.

We were incredibly lucky with the weather, with a daily average of around 25C. Had the weather been less kind, there is plenty to do indoors nearby like visiting the Atlantys Swimming Complex or The Aquarium in La Rochelle.

Hosts Michelle and Paul offer BBQ evenings, giving the guests a chance to know each other while eating delicious home cooked food. They also hold weekly football games with the local French residents, and guests are invited to take part. If you want a night out, they offer babysitting, a mini kids club in which they do arts & crafts, video nights for children complete with popcorn, and while we were there, they put on a fantastic Easter egg hunt. On our last night, they even set up a tent in the grounds for our and their children to have a camp out.

The Easter egg hunt (real and chocolate eggs were found!)

The football match with the locals

The kids got to camp out on the last night for added fun

My preconceived notions about spending my entire holiday cooking and cleaning were unfounded. Meals in France need to be nothing more than a smorgasbord of cheese, hams, breads, olives and fresh tomatoes – no cooking required. While our children are slightly older, even parents of babies and toddlers could easily have a relaxing break thanks to the layout of the gîtes, the services on offer and the extensive kit provided.

I’m a complete convert. We all returned home relaxed, refreshed, sun-kissed and in love with France.

While not all self-catering options are created equal, all those on the Tots to Travel website have been personally visited and vetted to ensure that they are safe for children, relaxing for parents and generally fabulous. Our toughest decision is where to go next with them – France, Spain, Italy or Portugal.

FACTS AND TOP TIPS

• Cost of accommodation: in Easter £640 for a week. Goes up to £875 per week in summer.
• Travel: Brittany Ferries - £371 return trip. Alternatively fly to La Rochelle (45 minutes drive from the Gites) on FlyBe, Jet2 or EasyJet
• Tolls: Approximately €40 each way
• Cognac tours: Try Hennessey which includes a boat trip or Remy Martin which includes a train ride
• Saintes: visit the Roman amphitheatre with children – little boys in particular will enjoy pretending to be gladiators in the ring
• Travel tip: we stayed overnight in Caen on our return due to an early start with the ferry. It would also be possible to leave at 2am and drive overnight, letting children sleep and get to the ferry in time. Alternatively, if driving up a day in advance, stop at the war cemeteries and D-Day landing beaches for some history.

What children really want

Now that heat has been restored to the house, my brain is defrosting enough for me to blog again. Here is the first of the holiday insights I had:

As parents, we often over complicate things. We imagine that children want expensive toys, when they're perfectly happy turning a carboard box into a den. We believe that unless we take them to expensive theme parks or zoos, they'll be bored. We feel the need to control what they're doing so that they're kept safe and don't bother other people. We think they need to bath everyday because the books said bathing helped babies settle well and we just stuck with the routine. We think they need to have three well balanced meals a day at roughly regular times.

But here's the thing. While discipline and healthy eating and safety and cleanliness are all important things, every once in a while it's ok to let it all go to hell in a hand basket. What's more, 'treats' like going to funfairs and meals out aren't necessarily what kids want.

What they want is the freedom to be, without the constraints of over zealous parenting.

Where we spent Christmas is the perfect place for children to experience the freedom that most kids just don't have these days. My children would get up, occasionally change out of their PJs and into shorts and Ts, reluctantly submit to an application of sunblock and then bolt out the door in search of their friends. They'd spend hours at a time out of our sight and without my knowledge of where they were, but with my knowing that they couldn't have got too far and were probably with someone I knew.

On one particular occasion, I found them four houses down in someone's else garden, high up in a tree. The tree was directly above a brick wall, which would have made for a fairly unpleasant landing place had they fallen out of the tree. The tree also had some kind of electric box on it for lights, another potential hazard. When I found them, my youngest child was hammering the tree with a large piece of metal. My normal mother antenna flicked on: Danger - could fall out of tree. Danger - could land on wall. Danger - could electrocute self. Behaviour - hitting someone's tree and potentially causing damage. Danger - could hit someone with metal. Behaviour - had they asked permission to climb the tree?

I knew the family whose tree it was, not that I could see them anywhere. I was about to start asking them to get down when my son turned to me and said: 'Could you leave now please?'

And I realised that sometimes, you just have to let go and let them be. They came to no harm. Neither did the tree and the people who's tree it was didn't bat an eyelid.

The kids would come back home when they were hungry. They were allowed fizzy pop (creme soda - vile green stuff with way to much sugar and artificial things in it) albeit in limited quantities. They got cleaned once a week despite having black feet and rings of dirt around their necks. They swam for hours and hours and hours. They learned to do forward rolls and forward flips and dives. We always had someone watch them swimming - I couldn't let go that much - but they were allowed to do outrageous things on piles of floating tubes that had me clutching my phone ready to call an ambulance, without saying a word (or at least not often).

They played impromptu games of football and rugby with a bunch of random kids and grown ups - whoever happened to be passing by. They flew kites and got them tangled. They played board games to escape the sun - and yes, they did play on their nintendo DSs that they got for Christmas a little more often than I would have liked.

They explored rock pools on beaches and pretended to hunt for pirate loot. They skimmed stones. They collected shells. And my eldest even managed to swim right across the river unaided, although my husband was on lifeguard duty on a canoe.

In short, they were free to be. And they loved it. We've had some lovely holidays, but never before at the end of a holiday have I had two small boys sobbing - I mean body shaking sobs with rivers of tears - about having to leave.

So parents if you're planning your next big expensive holiday, packed with activities and outings, I suggest you choose somewhere relatively safe where kids can play, ideally with other kids, and let them explore and be free. The sneaky plus side of this is that you get to chill out and read books (more on this in my next blog post). A win win.

Surviving the summer holidays: playdates for mums

Day 1 of Holidaywatch. And I'm already stumped as to what to do. Yesterday afternoon for about 15 minutes we had a blaze of glorious sunshine and for that brief time I had a snapshot of what summer holidays could be like if it actually felt like summer. Ball games in the garden, picnics, BBQs, long walks, swimming - the potential was awesome.

But then a vast black cloud moved in and dumped a deluge of water on the garden and we retreated indoors. Just like that, the wisp of potential drained away.

Now I know that there'll be a bunch of lovely mums out there who are tutting as they read this. The minute the rain moves in, they're probably whooping it up with arts & crafts, baking, puzzles & games, or even putting on raincoats and wellies and heading out for a splash. All good stuff. And I agree that all of these things can be fun. But for how long? And perhaps they have children who actually do the arts & crafts rather, than say, paint the walls. Or who can play a game for more than 3 minutes before the arguments start about whether to go up the snakes and down the ladders or vice versa.

So I start to look outwards, towards the countless number of places that keep children entertained at vast expense. Once you remove all those that aren't suitable for rainy days, you're left with a handful of options, none of which fill me with a huge amount of joy. I find myself doing a website roundabout tossing up between a museum or movie and eventually being debilitated by indecision, all the while the kids get bored and destroy the house.

Part of the problem is that any activity - whether it's a museum or finger painting, football or picnics - is so much better when you do them with a friend. And adult friend. Because then, in between breaking up fights, you can have a chat/commiserate and it feels less like hard work.

Don't get me wrong, I am perfectly capable of enjoying my children's company and I know the key is to not attempt to do anything else other than throw yourself into an activity with gusto. But just like the kids enjoy having a friend to play with, so do I.

But I've found it hard to find friends to do things with. We do have a good number of people that we'll be seeing during the holidays that we've pre-arranged things with, but what I'm missing is someone like a Who Wants to Be A Millionaire phone-a-friend type friend. The kind of friend who you know is sitting in the exact same position as you are, just as confused as to how to spend the day and just as open to last minute spur of the moment get togethers.

But everyone else seems to be so organised. They all seem to have every last minute of their holidays accounted for. They're all armed with playdough and museum season tickets. And friends. Lots and lots of friends.

Do they really all have every minute of the next six weeks accounted for? And how, without sounding like Desperate Dan or Norman No Mates, do you let other mums know that you're at home with two bored children and are more than happy to meet up for a spur of the moment play? There should be some kind of international sign - like a skull and crossbones flag (only the bones would be rolling pins and the skull would have bags under its eyes) - that you can fly outside your house. Any other mum who sees it can pop in and say: right, let's all go splash in the puddles together shall we? It turns an ok afternoon into a great afternoon for everybody.

I really hate being the person to call and say: are you free? Do you want to meet up? Only to be told that they have a free day at some point next Easter. I love last minute get togethers. They're the best kind. In fact Martha Lane Fox could set up a new kind of Lastminute.com to help mums get together, not only with kids but for the odd night out at a pub.

It's that whole fear of rejection which stops us putting a call into another mum and suggesting a meet up. But maybe, they are just like me, sitting there wishing the phone would ring.

I should start a campaign called Dial-a-mum in which mothers are encouraged to call people - even people they're not 'friends' with but acquaintances who they've met at the park or school gate who they could potentially be friends with. I'm sure I could get a phone company to sponsor it....

Anyway, I think we've decided to go to a museum. I think. And the kids are now killing each other, so I must go. But please tell me I'm not alone in this thinking.

The problem with having a far flung family

Here's some background. My father, stepmother and two half brothers live in South Africa. One of my sisters lives in Ireland, the other lives in New Zealand along with my mother and stepfather. I live in the UK. Let's just say that we don't often have family get togethers. Asking my children's grandparents to babysit isn't an option. And I always need to look at the last posting days for Christmas cards well in advance as it's some point in October.

In an attempt to let my children see their grandmother and auntie for about the second time in their lives, I have been looking into going to New Zealand, a place I've yet to visit despite the fact that my sister has lived there long enough to sound like a local. There have always been good reasons why I haven't yet gone.

First I was young and poor and starting to climb the career ladder. Then I moved to the USA. Then I got married so my finances were stretched for some time. Then we moved to the UK and started a new job/found new house etc. Then I got pregnant. Had baby 1. Ten months later I was pregnant again. I had two under twos. I had little sleep and even less sanity and there was no way I would have survived a 30 hour flight with them. Then we moved house again. Then we were flooded. And now here we are.

Now I have a 4.5 year old who will be 5 by the time I plan on going. And a 3 year old. Both with the inability to sit still for a nano second (unless they're poorly in which case they just vomit on people). The thought of the 30 hour flight still makes me want to grab a large meat skewer and plunge it into my wrists. The adjustment of the billion time zone differences with two boys who don't sleep at the best of times makes me exhausted just thinking about it. And even if we have the best, most relaxing holiday in the whole world ever (which it probably won't be as there won't be hot and cold running slaves waving palm fronds over me while someone entertains my children), any feelings of calm will evaporate the minute we board for the return flight home.

But ignoring all of that. Assuming that I want to put myself through a catastrophic amount of stress, the bottom line is that the cost of four airline tickets to New Zealand could buy you a nice small car. And that's flying DodgyAsianairline.com or Quantas which seems to have planes falling out of the sky on a daily basis. The flight prices themselves look reasonable. It's the sodding taxes. They're the same price as the flights. All well and good for protecting the environment blah blah but what's the point of having a nice environment if you can never get there to see it??

My computer screen image is burned onto my retinas such is the amount time I've spent surfing travel websites, flicking between airlines, resorts, tour operators and tripadvisor, with the latter normally sending me back to stage 1. I give up. I despair. I don't know how we will ever get to New Zealand unless someone invents one of those Star Trek 'beam me up' machines or some very strong tugboats tow New Zealand and the UK closer to each other. I wouldn't mind if they towed the UK further South. In fact they could tow it somewhere between Mauritius and the Seychelles. They could pull NZ to just below the Maldives. Everyone would be happy.

I'll take your suggestions on a post it note as to how to resolve this dilemma. Just so you know, I've already ticked off:
- let them come to us. Done
- win the lottery. Tried and failed
- meet halfway. A possibility but still doesn't get around me not ever having been there.
- stuff the children into suitcases to save on ticket costs and on-board stress. Tempting, but I think the NSPCC might have something to say about it.