Family holidays: what we got wrong — and right — by the experts

Times

2 days ago

It starts with such good intentions, writes Siobhan Grogan. When you first consider a family holiday, you might picture all the quality time spent together, long sunny days chatting and picnicking, perfectly built sandcastles on the beach, perhaps a glass of wine while your angelic child plays quietly nearby.
But children have an uncanny knack of upending even the best-laid plans, whether you're in the Maldives or Margate. They get ill at the most inconvenient times, have screaming meltdowns on planes, won't eat anything but chicken nuggets or decide they're terrified of the sea.
Yet we continue to live in hope for that rare time that everything goes perfectly to plan. Here are our writers' own tales of their best and worst family holidays to — hopefully — help you to avoid our mistakes this summer.
The stylish Peligoni beach club and villa set-up in northern Zakynthos manages to be heaven for children and adults. The kids' club, open four hours a day, runs activities such as sailing, tennis, tie-dyeing classes and so on, which means parents can get coffee, go to the gym, even talk to each other. Samuel, my four-year-old, was at the club every minute he was allowed. When we went last October half-term, the weather was absolutely chef's kiss: low twenties, still-warm sea, blue skies. It made me realise my non-negotiable on all future holidays: childcare.
Everything that could go wrong on holiday went wrong on our Barbados trip, when my son was 18 months old. We were all sick from unfiltered water; he didn't sleep and had severe nappy rash; it rained. We were tutted out of lovely linen-tablecloth restaurants when he lost interest in loud iPad videos. I had wanted to see the island so had booked us into five hotels in totally different places, and we spent most of our ten-day break travelling between them. Even nightly rum punches didn't cheer us up. It's the closest we've been to divorce. To top it off, we flew from Manchester.
On a recent (child-free) trip to Marbella, I noticed a family on holiday with two nannies and one toddler. This, I have learnt, is a reasonable adult-to-small-child ratio. One of our best holidays so far has been to a Landmark Trust house in Lyme Regis, Dorset, with my sister and her young family plus our parents. No airports, no (quickly crushed) expectations of sunbathing with a book. The cousins played (largely) happily together, chasing chickens around the garden and hiding behind curtains. The grandparents covered bedtime stories and the domestic drudgery was divvied up. One night, to celebrate a special birthday, a caterer came to cook dinner for us. Champagne! Canapés! No washing up! The ultimate treat.
City breaks, for me, mean walking for miles, dipping into shops, visiting galleries, sipping the odd overpriced drink in a hotel bar and dining out. None of which is suitable for young children. We took ours to Florence and, while they were doted on by the Italians, it was all a bit of a challenge. Narrow pavements, no playgrounds (at least that we could find), lots and lots of tourists, very late dinner times. Our eldest had a meltdown because I wouldn't let her hold the handmade marbled paper I'd bought. Even the chocolate gelato had to work hard to bring her round.
One of the benefits of having kids is that they don't know anything. So when you say things like 'We're going to Belgium!' they might be excited. This was the case when my lad was 12 and we took the train to Bruges. I was aiming for some kind of culturally uplifting experience, full of art, canal rides and architecture. But what was I thinking? The plan went straight out the window and we basically just larked about, eating fancy chocolate for breakfast, racing up the steps at the bell tower and laughing like drains in a museum dedicated to French fries. Who needs plans?
You know that feeling when you go camping and everything works out really well? No, me neither. But as a broke single dad, summers invariably used to involve at least one week sitting in a cheap tent somewhere in Yorkshire waiting for the rain to stop. The summer of 2014 was particularly memorable as my seven-year-old and I were joined in Robin Hood's Bay by, drum roll, Ex-Hurricane Bertha! Yes, I did eventually manage to catch up with the tent as it blew down the hill. No, I didn't notice the huge tear until I'd put the wretched thing up and unloaded the car. Yes, I had left the coolbox full of food at home on the kitchen table. No, I didn't cry that much.
The cottage looked adorable online. Exactly the kind of place you would choose if this was your first trip to Sardinia and you really wanted to see the island at its best. Unfortunately, when we pulled up outside — in the middle of a rainstorm — it became apparent that the guy who'd photographed the place had carefully framed out the depressing agricultural complex that dominated the landscape and the inescapable air of dark gloom within. Three rooms didn't have windows, the 'garden' had a broken twin tub in it and, worst of all, there was no television. I'm not ashamed to say I wept. As did my two children. But, magically, this then turned into …
… the best holiday, because my husband — not normally one for bold decisions or reckless expenditure — simply took out his credit card, held it aloft in front of his weeping women-folk and said: 'Behold: the solution.' Twenty minutes later we were in a frankly magnificent hotel on a white-sand beach with swimming pools that the kids spent all day in. Everywhere reeked of jasmine, the hotel restaurant did a cocktail that became my main source of hydration, and the thrill of pulling off a good holiday, having glimpsed the prospect of a nightmare one, kept us buzzing all week. Best of all, there was a TV in our bathroom. One rainy morning me and both kids watched all of Mamma Mia! while up to our necks in hot bubbles. Money: is there nothing it can't do?
• Read our full guide to Sardinia
A week on the beach at Watergate Bay in Cornwall has been a fixture on our family calendar from the get-go, with Granny and Grandpa stalwart supporters for many of those years. Accommodation has ranged from hotels to cottages to campsites. Our beach buddies have included like-minded London families and, now, teenage friends from school. Every year is the same, but also different. We surf. It rains (heavily) twice. The kids grow ever more capable. At the end of it we always wish we could stay another week.
We got our timing wrong with ski holidays. I'd heard loads of stories from the locals about how their children were skiing straight out of the cradle (well, almost) and so tried our son, Sam, in ski school in La Plagne, France, when he was three. When we picked him up later his face was white with dried tears and snot. He did one more day and then we gave up — and no one skied much after that. He loves it now, of course, but we should have waited until he was in reception year back home and not so freaked out by the company of strangers.
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Renting an out-of-season villa in the middle of nowhere in Umbria was risky. There was little close by for the kids to do, it was too early in the year to use the pool, and the nearest shop was half an hour's drive away if we ran out of milk (aka wine). In fact, we whiled away a surprisingly sunny week playing football and Frisbee in the garden, ate vats of no-frills pasta on the terrace, day-tripped to hilltop Assisi for great views and gelato, and discovered a vineyard within walking distance, where the owner lavished hunks of parmesan on the kids as we sampled the vino. It's the most relaxed I've ever felt on holiday.
Everyone loves Cornwall, apparently. Well, everyone can't have spent the best part of a day stuck in a traffic jam en route listening to the chirpy Peppa Pig theme tune at the start of each new episode on the iPad. My two-year-old was sick several times on the journey — we later discovered she has chronic travel sickness — and our rented cottage had a death-trap staircase our daughter wanted to spend the entire day going up and down. Plus, the 'short drive' to the nearest beach was not so short once you'd factored in hours spent battling for a parking space. I still shudder when I see Peppa Pig.
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Every summer between the ages of 5 and 15 with my parents and siblings, and now as an adult with my own children, I have spent a week on a narrowboat. It's always the highlight of our year — normal life fades away. Last year our route took us through Skipton and the Yorkshire Dales. On golden afternoons my niece lay on the roof reading Agatha Christie aloud to her cousins as emerald-green hills slipped by. True, there was a sticky spot when we ran out of water and no one could shower for two days. But that was all part of the fun.
Once I had aspirations that we would become a 'van family'. We bought a second-hand VW when our sons were two and four and headed to a sprawling campsite behind Rhossili beach on the Gower peninsula. We spent an hour trying to get the van level and erect our awning, then it began to drizzle. When it stopped raining we collected driftwood from the beach and made a campfire, but got nothing but black smoke. We thought we'd go for a meal then realised we couldn't get anywhere without packing up again. The boys went back to their iPads in the van, while my husband and I sat silently outside in the cold and dark, watching other families happily barbecuing and drinking beers.
Mum died. Not on the holiday, but before. Also before was the London Olympics, so the biggest month of my professional career. Bradley Wiggins had won Great Britain's first gold medal and I was waiting to speak with him when I got the call to say come home, quick. She went that night. I took one day off then carried on working. So there was no time to grieve, no time to process and when we finally got to our villa that was beginning to show, physically and mentally. Then I fell down the stairs. Speaking to the owners about an air-con issue, I must have dripped water on my way up, slipped on it coming down. Marble. Top to bottom. Not good. At least I wasn't hospitalised.
Shame, because it was lovely, I'm told. Roberto ran the house and cooked for us — 'very fresh, very typical' — and one of my lads still says it's the best villa we've had. Pity I wasn't really around to enjoy it.
Just came back from it, thanks for asking. Only ten days, but as the family gets older it's harder to be in one place together. But this was us — my three sons, all the girls, even our Australian exiles. The villa in Zakynthos was superb, again — 'I reckon better than that one in Sardinia where you fell down the stairs,' said Art — we swam in the Ionian Sea, Rob fanned the barbecue and Will cooked some nights, so we dined like gods. And Art has a new Australian hip now, so is getting his life back. No crutches any more. I could have whiled away hours just watching him walk. Had it rained every day — and, no, not a drop — it would still have felt perfect.
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I was a weird teenager because I really enjoyed hanging out with my family. Which was just as well because in the summer of 1997 we crammed into our car, drove to Hull, caught the ferry to Zeebrugge and then spent the next fortnight on the road. The Black Forest! The Swiss Alps! Austria! The shores of Lake Garda! I was 15, had made an incredible mix tape — which I made everyone listen to constantly — I read The Secret History by Donna Tartt and my parents even let me have the occasional beer. From watching Aida staged in Verona's Roman arena to guzzling sausages at a Bavarian village fête run by drunken firemen, I loved every single minute of it and still think about it weekly.
Our first holiday as a family should have been great: a pretty little villa not far from the south coast of Mallorca where we could decompress after successfully completing our first 12 months of parenthood — ie alternate between nailing cold cans of Mahou Cinco Estrellas, paddling in the sea and taking nap after nap after nap. Unfortunately our son decided to run an explode-the-thermometer temperature and have a violent febrile seizure. Cue an ambulance ride to the hospital, where we all spent the next four days sharing a stuffy, windowless hospital room. On the plus side the hospital canteen had a wine list — quite good, actually — but I've never wanted to be home while on holiday quite so badly.
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In 2008 we decided to take no risks on our first holiday as a family of four — just a cosy Dartmoor cottage in late September. Where better to be sleep-deprived and out of our parenting depth? Alas, the cottage was not as described: one tiny broken bed, several broken windows and a swamp for a driveway. Which would have been fine except it was raining, from the minute we arrived to the minute we left (three days early). Which would have been fine except the farmer who rented it lived right next door. He was a lonely old man who tried to whittle wooden animals but always ended up with wooden mushrooms. He liked to come into our kitchen to make himself a brew. We left with two mushrooms and three colds — and a renewed gratitude for our own cosy home.
In 2010 we decided to take some risks on our third and final family holiday before Child A started school. We set off on a four-week camper van trip across France feeling like expert parents. For the first three weeks and two days it rained, and we were worn down by the damp, the drudgery, the fermé signs in every restaurant window. Then, for the first and probably last time, I decided to hang the expense. I booked us into the most expensive luxury château I could find in Bordeaux. We arrived and a team of valets unpacked all our waterlogged equipment. They hung our bell tent in the wine cave to dry while we sat on the terrace ordering lunch. The sun came out and I don't think I've ever been happier.
Even though I grew up a few hours away, I'd shamefully never taken the family to Montreal. Last October we stepped out of the Gare Centrale just as the autumn leaves were peaking and summer was heaving a final sigh. Obviously we headed straight out for poutine at La Banquise. Then we hit Saint Laurent Boulevard, which is rammed with vintage boutiques, and relaxed on Larrys café patio just as the Halloween revelry was getting into gear — children in zoo animal onesies on the early shift, sexy nurses and Village People on the late one. My eldest was so charmed she decided to go to university there.
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Living in Shanghai with two toddlers was intense, so we booked a week in Yunnan, the mountainous province in China's west, for some fresh air and exercise. Right off the bat we realised how badly we'd planned, showing up in historic Lijiang during a high-traffic public holiday with a double buggy and a hotel reservation at the top of a steep, cobbled hill. The girls, with their white-blonde hair, endured constant curiosity from crowds reaching out to touch them. After dinner in the old town, two of us got food poisoning from a misguided bowl of yak curry and spent the night on the floor of the lavatory. We gave it another day but ended up quitting after two nights.
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