Make happy ‘helliday’ memories
If your family holidays feel less like a break and more like ‘chores on tour’, you are not alone. Georgina Fuller is braced for half term
If you were to believe those picture perfect posts you see on Instagram of Boden-clad, peachy-cheeked cherubs in Breton tops on windswept beaches, you would think that every family holiday was one long riot of “making memories”; that every parent who happened to be on or in the proximity of a beach felt permanently #blessed by their braying brood.
Well, I am here to tell you that is really not the case. What you don’t see or hear about are the sibling squabbles, the complaints about sand in every unfortunate orifice and the heinously long queues for over-priced ice cream.
We were fortunate to have two weeks away this summer in the UK (I shudder to use the term “staycation” as it seems, much like “holibobs”, to be pretty divisive and cause warfare). We spent a week in heavenly Devon and a week in wonderful Wales and, in true British summer style, it rained pretty much continually for both breaks.
One morning, as I trudged back to the quaint little Welsh cottage (okay, bungalow) we were renting for the third time to get a change of clothes for our youngest – who, after insisting there was “No way, Mummy!” she was going to swim in the rain, waded in with wild abandon, fully clothed – I started to think that family holidays ought to be reframed.
I felt even more frazzled than before we went away from the never-ending conveyor belt of meals, entertainment, mediating and trying to keep our three children – Charlie, 12, Eddie, 9, and Jemima, 7 – occupied. The self-imposed pressure to “relax” while “making memories” just added to the sense of deflated exhaustion.
As the week went on, I realised that holidays with young children really don’t fit the brief of how I still imagine holidays to be: reading on the beach, exploring new places in blissful solitude and recharging your batteries.
When I tweeted about this, I had dozens of responses from equally frazzled parents about how we should rebrand family holidays. It was comforting to know I’m not alone. Among my favourite alternatives were “hellidays”, “chores on tour” and “childcare in a different climate”.
As my husband, Dom, and I are outnumbered by children (and the dog), we often end up doing the divide and conquer rule. I will take the boys for a lovely coastal walk with the dog while he takes the younger one for a swim on the beach. Or I will take the eldest and youngest on the boat while he stays on the shore with the middle one who is on the autism spectrum and has something called Sensory Processing Disorder. This means that, among other things, he gets easily overwhelmed and overstimulated by noise, crowds and colours. It also means he refuses to get on a boat.
In small Devon village of Hope Cove, I watched with unbridled envy as other, more conventional, sporty families all donned wetsuits and paddleboarded their way around the bay. I had booked our eldest in for a surfing lesson the day before, when it had rained continually. Let’s just say he was underwhelmed by the whole experience, while I was £75 out of pocket.
Having said that, we did have some glorious moments on our UK breaks. We have been going to the same spot in Devon since the youngest was a baby, thanks to some family friends who have an apartment with the most spectacular sea views in Thurlestone. So we have come to know the area pretty well.
The coastal walk from the beach at Thurlestone to Hope Cove is dreamy and as it only takes about 15 minutes, the children don’t complain too much. And the best thing is, there’s a pub at the end of it, which the 12-year-old says, “serves the best fish and chips in the world”.
We also often holiday at nearby Salcombe, where we have established some family traditions. There, with warm, freshly-made Cornish pasties in our rucksacks, we take a boat from the town across to the beach. We let the dog run along the shore and swim in the sea while we climb the rocks and have a picnic lunch. We also always make sure to visit the famous Cranch’s Sweetshop and stock up on teeth-rotting candy in stripy pink and white bags. I treat myself to some fudge and we pick up some biscuits for family and friends.
When the bad weather sets in, we enjoy playing Monopoly or Dog Bingo together in the flat. Then there’s the pure delight of that moment where we come in from a busy day and sit with a drink on the balcony watching the sun go down on the famous rock, seagulls
darting around us and the gentle sounds of the waves.
Over the years we have also taken the children further afield to several places in Europe, including France, Spain and Holland. My late mother and her husband had a house in south-west France, so we spent a lot of time there. The kids have marvelled at the Bayeux tapestry, stayed 20ft high in a treehouse in the grounds of a Normandy chateau and played giant chess in the town square in Monflanquin.
The eldest and I spent a few days in Amsterdam on our last adventure abroad, where I had accidentally booked us into a hotel in the Red Light district during Pride week. It was certainly an illuminating experience. Charlie, then nine, came away thinking the Dutch were a jolly bunch who love dancing in windows, are keen horticulturists who put plant signs up everywhere and are hardy souls who could tolerate the cold very well – seeing as they wear so few clothes. He couldn’t believe the price they charged for (hash) cakes, though.
The children still talk about the fantastic pancake house we went to in nearby Haarlem which had a ginormous trampoline outside and, just down the road, a cat cafe.
But their favourite holiday was the ruinously expensive week we spent in Ibiza at an all-inclusive hotel with Butlins-style evening entertainment, a kids club and a buffet bar with a chocolate fountain (and Cava on tap for the adults). I didn’t have to do so much as clear a plate away or step into Aldi once and my husband and I actually got to enjoy a few uninterrupted conversations while the children were off doing their own thing. It was blissful. So I know that it is possible to relax on holiday with children as long as you have got someone else feeding, entertaining and looking after them.
I realised while holidaying in the UK though that, in some ways, I actually find being away harder than being at home. At least the children have their toys/digital devices/friends here – and I can outsource one of them to friends or family for a few hours for some respite.
Yet despite all previous experiences, where I’ve reached high levels of fleeting despair, I still remain ignorantly, naively enthusiastic – think Chevy Chase in National Lampoon’s Vacation – about going away. Maybe I should learn to temper my optimism and remember that, as with so many other aspects of parenting, it is all about expectation versus reality.
Perhaps I am partly to blame for raising high-maintenance children who seem to expect round-the-clock entertainment. My mother, a former teacher, was a big believer in what she called “healthy neglect”: sending us roaming around the Scottish Highlands to get stung by midges; allowing us to go cliff jumping off the rocks in Devon and Cornwall or play on campsites with fellow feral children in France.
I still have very hazy, happy memories of my childhood holidays, though, and the sense of freedom that came with them. I hope to create the same sort of template for my three, so I will carry on trying to make memories and pray that one day they will all look back over our adventures as blissful childhood sojourns – and not realise that they almost drove me to despair every time.
I might even post the odd edited highlight of the moments when they weren’t fighting while I sipped a gin in a tin admiring the sunset, looking every inch the perfect family.
I promise I’ll never use the hashtag #blessed though.