Planning a family break in London can be a logistical nightmare – but I think I’ve cracked it.To save precious time, my wife and I needed a location with easy access to the sights, and to save our sanity we needed a self catering apartment with a separate bedroom for the kids.Step forward Fraser Suites…
Chester’s famous city walls have been taking their biggest pounding since Oliver Cromwell’s Parliamentarian forces launched an assault during the Civil War.As the UK was plunged into coronavirus lockdowns, the two-mile long ancient monument became the go-to place for thousands of locals to get their daily dose of exercise.The most complete city walls in Europe,…
Each year, the small, picture-postcard Derbyshire Dales village of Tissington is invaded by 50,000 visitors over just seven days.The hoards are attracted to Tissington’s six wells which every Ascension Day are decorated (or ‘dressed’) with flower petals, as well as cones, mosses, seeds and beans.In a laborious process, each petal is placed individually – overlapping like tiles on a roof…
It was a ‘knight’ to remember as tales of dragons and princesses were told in the grounds of a medieval castle.For starters, Zog and Princess Pearl climbed out of the pages of Julia Donaldson’s best-selling children’s book to recall how they became flying doctors.Then, as bedtime grew near, a sword-wielding knight recalled a tale of another fire-breathing friend which enthralled young listeners and – like all the best pantos – amused mums and dads, too.Accident-prone Zog and Pearl…
IT was good weather for ducks and surfers as we arrived at our holiday destination on the north Cornwall coast.We had neither feathers nor wetsuits to protect us from the driving wind and rain, but that didn’t totally spoil the start of our October half term short break. From our apartment, up a hill in…
La vie en rose! The surreal Pink Granite Coast is as beautiful as it is rugged and must be one of France’s best kept secrets. Miles of colourful, misshapen boulders, some up to 20m in height, are stacked on top of each other, often balanced at seemingly impossible angles. Three hundred million years in the…
The eccentric old woman who lived alone in a cave aroused the suspicion of villagers. They suspected witchcraft and started blaming her for everything from ill health and failing crops to wifi outages and Brexit! Hearing their pleas for help, the Abbot of Glastonbury Abbey sent Father Bernard into the witch’s lair, armed only with…
Spending peaceful evenings gazing up at the stars I came to understand the appeal of Sherwood Forest to Robin Hood and his band of Merry Men. After a hard day robbing from the rich to give to the poor the outlaw would rest under the branches of the Major Oak (or inside the tree if…
There can be few more appropriately named streets than the two we came across on a weekend away – Happy Land and Bow Wow. The former, in the Wiltshire village of Ashton Keynes, overlooks a playground where our two children spent a (for want of a better word) happy half hour. The latter is a…
The thought of taking the family on a winter break in a caravan had always left me cold. I had visions of us all cuddling together in one bed to keep warm while the caravan wobbled in the wind like a bowl full of jelly. But mobile homes have come a long way in recent…
You just can’t beat palming your kids off on another family while on a camping holiday! Our two children were quick to make new friends and every day after tea they would go to neighbouring caravans to play.Which meant Mum and Dad could relax in the setting sun, glass of wine in hand, gathering our…
A little piece of south Devon is leading the fight back against the modern day scourge of computer games, phones and Netflix. Self-catering destination Beyond Escapes is harking back to a simpler time when the biggest thrill a child could have was building a den in the great outdoors. Den-making kits, including ropes, groundsheet, camouflage…
It’s always a bit of a balancing act for parents of young children in early autumn. You want them to join in the Halloween fun but you don’t want them so scared that they climb into your bed complaining of nightmares. Scarefest at Staffordshire theme park Alton Towers has always been the go-to attraction for…
Moving the mosquito net to one side, we rolled out of the four-poster bed in our safari tent, excited about the animal adventures that lay ahead. Later, just a ten-minute drive away, we got up close to some of the area’s magnificent wildlife – giraffes, lions, rhinos, zebras and those lovable meerkats. But rather than…
It’s a view that could inspire the artist Damien Hirst and put a spring in the step of triple jumper Jonathan Edwards. But more of those two later… We were staying on the fourth floor of Granville Point, an imposing, castellated former Victorian hotel in the centre of Ilfracombe. The views from our apartment, called…
