Little feet, big adventures
Hanna Lindon’s tips for getting outdoors as a family
ALMOST EVERY expectant parent makes themselves a secret promise that goes something like this: my life really isn’t going to change that much. With a shudder of distaste and a warm glow of superiority, we watch our friends ferrying their tots round an endless cycle of soft play, park trips and hellish birthday parties. This baby is going to fit in with what we want to do, we think, not the other way around.
A year later we’re sat in a Fun World ball pit surrounded by germy, jam-smeared kids, wondering where it all went wrong.
The reason for this embarrassing about-face is simple: once you have children, your overriding motivation is to make them happy. If they’d rather spend the weekend fighting over piñata sweets at Little Robbie’s birthday party than hanging out at the pub with a bevy of mildly pissed adults (and let’s face it, what kid wouldn’t?), then most of us are ready to swap a cooling pint for a lukewarm cuppa.
But one of the few things that unites kids and adults is a love of the outdoors. That’s why it always comes as a surprise to me that you see so few families – particularly families with babies and pre-school kids – out and about in more remote countryside. Is it uncertainty over what they’re capable of? The prospect of midwalk tantrums? The fear of going somewhere that isn’t officially designated ‘family friendly’?
In my personal experience as a parent of two pre-school girls, the hardest thing about exploring wilder countryside with kids is the car journey to your start point. Conquering the car wobblies means the outdoors is your oyster. And the best thing you can do is to start them young.
Baby steps
It’s easy not to walk with a new baby. You’re sleep-deprived, emotional and battling with a blizzard of nappies, bottles and sick-stained babygros. You’ve got a whole raft of companies telling you that you simply can’t leave the house without the latest huggyblanket, bucket bath, fold-out nappy mat and super-slider pram. And if you’re the one who’s just had the baby, you’re probably also wondering what an over-enthusiastic stride might do to your battered insides.
Whatever mental barriers stand between you and the nearest hill, though, walking is pretty much the best thing you can do with a newborn.
“When it comes to exercising postpartum, walking is one of the first activities that can be recommended for most women,” says pregnancy and postnatal fitness expert Dr Joanna Helcke.
“It’s what the body is designed to do, and it tends to keep baby happy, making it one of the few forms of fitness that doesn’t require childcare.”
I walked with both my kids from day dot, starting with bimbles around the local fields and progressing pretty quickly to hills. Once I’d got a comfortable front carrier sorted (more on that in the side bar), worked out that dock leaves make a serviceable alternative to baby wipes, and learned to plonk myself down unselfconsciously to breastfeed whenever the screaming started (you can carry mini cartons of milk if you’re bottle feeding), it seemed a lot easier than trying to keep them entertained at home.
My back tended to give in around the seven-mile mark, but there are plenty of parents who can stick it out for longer. One of them is Jen Lumanlan, who hiked the Tour du Mont Blanc with her eight-week-old daughter.
“[It was] one of the best things I’ve ever done,” she says. “It was critical to developing a sense that I could be a mother and not totally lose myself in the process. My friend and I approached it as a series of day hikes and at the end of each day we asked each other if we were still having fun. At the end of the third day we stopped asking – because we just were having fun.”
Toddler tantrums
When my first daughter was around 18 months old, we bundled her onto the night train and took her hillwalking in the Highlands. We’d had some serious mountains in our sights for a while, but the prospect of a day-long car journey complete with screeching baby soundtrack had always sent us cringing with southernly cowardice back to the South Downs.
The night train solved the travel issue and we planned to split the carrying between a backpack (Dad) and a front carrier (me). There was just one problem: she was set on using her own legs.
Toddlers are incredibly irritating hiking companions. They
can walk for a surprisingly long way – in completely the wrong direction. When you do manage to get them tottering alongside you, they go so slowly that any progress seems purely accidental. Then there are the two-minute stops to pat trees, chink stones, blow dandelion clocks and lick unsuspecting insects.
The only way to deal with this is to accept it. We realised early on in the trip that we probably wouldn’t get the tot up Ben Nevis. Instead, we forded streams, splashed in waterfalls and picnicked en route to Steall Falls. We explored the hills around Glenfinnan and let her watch the Jacobite Express steaming across Glenfinnan Viaduct. We set up a low-level wild camp in a secluded but easily accessed spot and went for dawn rambles through the heather.
My theory is that plenty of walking-mad parents give up at the toddler stage because it’s easier to let them loose in soft play than it is to coax them up a hill. Hang on in there. Before you know it, you’ll have a four-year-old who’s twirling on trig points and bagging Wainwrights with the best of them.
Quests and quizzes
Between three and four, kids gradually acquire the ability to walk for long distances. Whether they want to, of course, is another matter. Food bribery is one way to cajole them through the miles, but it’s more effective to make walking fun.
“This isn’t a walk, it’s a quest,” we tell daughter number one at the beginning of any unusually long outing. “You can choose the theme.”
And then she tells us that we’re Sam and Frodo carrying the One Ring to Mount Doom, or Robin Hood and his Merry Men robbing the rich in Sherwood Forest, or Ana searching for Elsa’s ice palace. The downside is that you have to spend the entire walk
“When they’re young, you have to be careful not to put them off”
in character – but, hey, at least the scenery’s good.
Like us, kids really notice scenery. It’s amazing how quickly my two will start dragging their feet when we’re walking through a ploughed field or along a featureless lane. They revel in the scenic company of woods, rivers, waterfalls and high places. One of our most successful walking holidays was spent in the French Alps, discovering the cascades of the Fer-a-Cheval cirque and marmotwatching on the way to the 1710 metre (5610 feet) summit of La Bourgeoise.
After a starter course of near-daily Downs walks, longer weekend epics and walking holidays, my four-year-old daughter can manage around ten miles at a pop. She cuts maps out of
magazines, obsesses over images of mountains and occasionally even asks to go for walks. So far, so good – but how long will it last? And when can I risk coaxing her up her first Munro?
Positive reinforcement
To get an idea of what’s to come, I spoke to adventurer and fatherof-two Mark Waring.
His kids are now 17 and 14, but he’s been taking them on multi-day mountain hut treks in Scandinavia since the youngest was four years old.
“When they were younger, I was basically the pack horse,” he says. “What you can carry kind of restricts where you can go. On my own I’d carry food for 17 days, but with kids we could only be self-sufficient for two to three days, tops.”
As they grow, he adds, it’s still important to keep them engaged. Whereas pre-schoolers might respond to quests and bug hunts, older kids are more likely to get excited about fascinating geographical and historical factoids. One thing Mark says makes a particular impression on me: give them positive experiences while they’re young.
“We all know somebody whose parents took them on a trip and they hated it because it rained – well, that colours their perspective for the rest of their lives. Don’t forget that, as an adult, your tolerance for suffering is far higher than theirs. For us, being wet, tired, cold and hungry can almost be part of the experience. Your children will probably see it differently.
“When they’re young, you have to be careful not to put them off it and instead to make each experience as comfortable and enjoyable as possible, because at some point they will make up their own minds.”
When my own kids are old enough to decide for themselves, I hope these early explorations will have lit a fire that continues to burn over a lifetime of outdoor adventure.