How to… take a family gap year;

Take a family gap year in a caravan. By Tim Meek When Amy was 10 and Ella eight, we sold the house and took the girls out of school

Two years ago my wife Kerry and I were both working as primary-school teachers in Nottingham. We felt the job was becoming more about collecting data than teaching, and neither of us was happy. For three years before we had been prioritising time outdoors as a family, going away with our two girls at weekends to camp and explore. We decided if we were going to live for the weekends then they needed to be worth living for, and as the girls got older we became more ambitious. The local paper took an interest in our blog tracking our activities, then the Caravan Club challenged us to take 20 adventure holidays in 20 weeks and win a caravan. We intended to sell it if we won, but then I thought, let’s have an adventure.

We won the caravan, and in September 2014, when Amy was 10 and Ella eight, we sold the house and took the girls out of school. It was easier than you would think, because we were both teachers so could prove we were able to educate them.

Now we travel all over the UK, structuring our days to balance education and adventure. A normal day could start with oneon-one maths lessons, then in English we might get the girls to write a blog post for a specifc audience. We all exercise daily: running around and playing games. In the afternoons we explore or visit a learning site. We haven’t banned television but the girls rarely choose to turn it on.

We’ve tried to make our learning richer than it is in a classroom, whether it is going to the beach to see coastal erosion or standing on the English Heritage site where the Battle of Hastings took place. We’ve worked hard to develop the girls’ social skills and have maintained their existing friendships by coming back to Nottingham regularly.

Our adventure was always meant to be one academic year but nobody wanted to stop, so we have just carried on. Inter view by Olivia Ovenden

50 Evening Adventures by the Meek family (Frances Lincoln, £12.99) will be published on April 7

Photograph by Lauren Maccabee The Meek family with their travelling home.