Handy Hints

» Grandparents! Don’t take kids to a “surprise” destination without discreetly finding out first whether or not they’ve already been there. You don’t want to pay a hefty admission charge only to have them tell you that they were there six months ago on a school trip.

» Always check the website of any destination beforehand, as many places hold special events for families and children during the holidays on certain days. You might want to time your visit to coincide with one of these.

» When planning an outing by car, see if there are any garden centres on the way there or back. Bigger garden centres usually have a café or restaurant selling no-nonsense meals with chips at reasonable prices, so they might be a good mealtime stop. They may also have things to look at, such as a pet shop or aquarium.

» Going by train will usually be more fun for kids, as will the bus if they don’t travel by bus very often. It might well also be less stressful than driving and trying to find (and pay for) a parking space. For all your regional transport queries, try using travelwest.info to plan the journey. This fiendishly useful website also has a load of Bristol and West of England walking routes.

» If going by car, ensure you take one or two of those plastic supermarket ice cream tubs. These are useful containers for anything from souvenir sea-shells to blackberries picked from hedgerows. They can also be held under the faces of children who have OD’d on ice cream and fizzy pop and are now threatening to be car-sick. (NB: Remove blackberries first.)

» Likewise, keep an empty Oasis soft drink bottle in the car. It’s got a wider neck than most other plastic drink bottles and if a young male is in urgent need of relief on the motorway and the next services is miles away, well …

» Always get them to use the dressing-up box. Many places have a box of hats and clothes allowing children to dress up like the house’s original owners for cute photos.

The resulting pictures can be used a few years later to blackmail recalcitrant teenagers into behaving like normal people. “See this picture of you aged seven sitting on a medieval toilet while dressed as Anne Boleyn? If you don’t tidy your room/do your homework/eat your greens, it’ll be all over social media.”