Have Kids Will Travel
Have Kids Will Travel is my way to help myself and other parents get back into travel by tackling the barriers to family travel, one issue at a time.
The barriers I’ve identified so far are:
👉 Budget
👉 Time
👉 Anxiety
👉 Sustainability
Have Kids Will Travel is currently active on Instagram but the plan is to launch a newsletter and podcast series, too.
Travel before kids…
Before I had kids, I was a fearless solo traveller. Possibly stupidly so. I hitch hiked, jumped out of a plane and turned up in strange cities with no bed booked for the night ahead. I met the future father of my kids in Mongolia.
In my 20s, I travelled the world, crossing entire land masses overland, meeting strange and wonderful people and feeling indestructible. I worked as a travel editor and thought of Prêt sandwiches in terms of the cost of a night’s accommodation in Thailand.
In my 30s, I got a job as VisitEngland’s editor and my world shrank a little. But what it lacked in width it gained in depth as I got under the skin of England.
My world shrank a little more
Then A was born and my world shrank even more. Home seemed safer than the world outside. And easier. And cheaper. When E arrived two and a half years later, those feelings doubled. Throw COVID-19 into the mix and world seems lock-the-door-and-piss-your-pants risky.
Since 2014, we’ve spent a week in Ericeira, Portugal, a week staying with family in Nerja, Spain and two glorious weeks for a family wedding in South Africa. Apart from those marvellous interludes, most of our holidays were in the UK or visiting family in Devon and Winnipeg, Canada.
It’s lovely, but not quite the travel experience I imagined for my kids. I had a family travel plan the way most parents have birth plans. I was going to show my children far-flung cultures and imbue in them a sense of being citizens of the world. The child-free me knew it could be done. One day as I was rattling along a vertiginous Himalayan dirt road in a bus, a couple soared past on a motorbike with their daughter tucked between them, dusty blond hair streaming behind them. Until that moment I didn’t even want kids. That carefree couple showed me that life as a parent wouldn’t have to mean a life without travel.
Barriers to family travel
Reader, I couldn’t do it! Of course I couldn’t! There’s no way in hell I’d take my kids on a motorbike along those dangerous roads. The girl wasn’t even wearing a helmet!
Somewhere between the 24-hour bus journeys and having two tiny human beings, the crushing realities of post-partum anxiety, a lack of time and a budget shrunken by a mortgage and school holiday price hikes set in, meaning we rarely travel.
I just need to figure out a way to do it, and in a more sustainable way. That’s what Have Kids Will Travel is about. Finding ways to overcome the barriers to travelling more as a family.
Finding our way back to travel - as a family
Have Kids Will Travel is my journey back to travelling, this time with kids. I want to show them the marvels of this world and remind myself what a wonderful place it is, too.
I hope that talking about each of these barriers in detail will embolden and enable us to travel more as families.
I also promise to KEEP IT REAL. No airbrushing – of us or the destination. No pretending that family travel is all awe and bonding. I cover it all, from the sweet-as sunsets to the stained tees and tantrums. Otherwise there’s no way family travel can live up to the expectation.
I’m going on a hunch that I’m not alone in feeling like this. If this is you too, it would mean so much to me if you’d come along for the ride!
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A monthly dose of family travel news, reviews and inspiration. I promise to only send you stuff I genuinely believe you will find useful, funny or inspiring.