Full steam ahead for family fun
How to keep four children happy? Head for the Yorkshire hills
YOu lot again!’ beamed the grizzled guard as we climbed aboard for yet another chuff along the North Yorkshire Moors Railway. We admired every curve of the track, every parp of the whistle. And what a lot we were; a couple with two boys aged six and four and two-and-a-half-year-old twin girls in tow.
Steam trains run up and down the country, but few pass through such dramatic scenery as that which winds from Pickering to Whitby — and includes not only the setting for Hogsmeade station from the Harry Potter films, but also the backdrop for ITV’s Heartbeat series.
We were on a four-day break, escaping the city to breathe clean air and tramp around in mud and woodland — perfect for the upcoming October half-term.
Our hotel was The White Swan Inn in Pickering, a 16th-century coaching inn, which has been owned for the last 35 years by the Buchanan family. Immediate thoughts ran along these lines: would our children A) behave? B) break things? and C) infuriate other guests?
And the answers? Mostly yes to A, and it would appear, miraculously, no to C.
In fact, no one batted an eyelid at the multiple trips to the bathroom during meals, the piles of books, colouring pencils and muddy boots that crowded our table — or the glass that went flying on our first morning...
We piled all four children into one of our adjoining rooms, on deep twins and Z-beds. That meant we could uncork a bottle of wine and relax in the other.
Having packed for Yorkshire weather, the rooms were warm as toast (though one child found the underfloor heating dial, cranked it to 30 and left us all sweltering).
Our time passed happily; after the trains, the enormous Dalby Forest saw us coax our littlest along the delightful Highway Rat activity trail, having blithely decided not to bring a buggy.
Then the boys were harnessed up for Go Ape — it was my younger son’s first time on the popular zip wire and rope bridge treebound adventure courses.
His slight frame meant the ropes barely moved under his weight and he loved it, nipping round the course after his big brother.
Hungry from clambering and scrambling, there was one last place to go before heading home. Skipping down the 96 steps — we counted — to the beach at Whitby, the children ran wild and free, hurling stones, jumping waves and ignoring the wind pinching their faces.
Munching through huge plates of fish and chips later, cheeks glowing pinkly from the chilly air, we realised we want to spend every holiday just like this.