Baby on board: four families on intrepid travels with kids

Any guide to travelling with toddlers will tell you that meticulous planning is essential, particularly if you want your trip to look effortless. We planned badly and made ours look hard. Spontaneity is our thing! Why change now?

As if under the illusion we were travelling by Volvo V90, we packed up 11 bags, including totes, wheelies, rucksacks, plastic bags (bulging with snacks) and a baby carrier. Oh, and a spare potty. Boarding trains in Vietnam, I’d scoop our daughter up and fling her into the arms of an unsuspecting ticket inspector, so I could scrabble around puce-faced, gathering up our remaining Bags for Life (my dignity tended to be left on the platform).

We often took night trains as we travelled south through Vietnam and found a way to keep our daughter’s bedtime routine in our little private compartments. We’d get her into her PJs, give her a sippy cup of UHT milk and read Room on the Broom as the train heaved out of the station. Rocked by the swaying motion and calmed by the repetitive clunking, she had some of the best sleeps of her life. Her parents? Not so much.

Not that sleep was a particular challenge generally. For New Year’s Eve, we were in Bangkok, a city renowned for its bars, clubs and late-night dining. But on the big night of the year we were in a single hotel room with our daughter, the three of us in bed with the lights off at 8pm. My partner and I sat in the gloom, each with one AirPod in, watching Sex and the City (the only show downloaded on the iPad, honest). We were asleep by 9.30pm. Start as you mean to go on, I guess.

We quickly realised that toddlers don’t cease to be toddlers just because they’re somewhere new. Our daughter had a few meltdowns, as you’d expect. In a museum in Ho Chi Minh City, she was politely told off for trying to sit on an expensive sculpture of a mule, then wailed “I want my donkey!” for a full hour.

We dragged her around countless temples, pagodas and ancient ruins throughout the region, but she couldn’t give a monkey’s (unless there were actual monkeys). At Angkor Wat, she was far happier scratching around in the dirt with a stick. Her favourite thing about Bangkok was two oversized, slightly forlorn-looking teddy bears in gingham shirts slumped on a restaurant’s banquette, which she named (I transliterate) “Pissu” and “Piersel”. And in Hanoi, a city full of culinary delights, we spent more time than I care to admit at the Moose & Roo Smokehouse. A frankly bizarre Canadian-and-Australian fusion restaurant, it served buffalo wings and BBQ ribs, but most importantly, it had the only playground within a three-mile radius.

Perhaps our daughter was on to something, though. Now, a few months since returning to the UK, our fondest memories from the trip aren’t of the museums or tourist sights. Instead we remember the small, seemingly insignificant aspects of our peripatetic family life: waking up three in a bed; our morning routine of coffees and juice at a curbside café; playing the First Orchard board game over long dinners; reading bedtime stories on a night train; and yes, those two sagging teddies. Even if we had planned it perfectly, we could never have predicted that.

Matt’s top three Thailand tips

1. Keep a journal Include unphotogenic moments like ‘R barfed in taxi en route to the sculpture museum’
2. Go to playgrounds Your child will make friends, you can strike up conversation with their parents
3. Don’t potty-train Seriously, it can wait until you get home

Standing on tiptoes, I counted. Only two groups remained between us and the big man. It was three days before Christmas and my family and I had taken the overnight Santa Claus Express from Helsinki to Rovaniemi in the heart of Finnish Lapland to fulfil a festive dream of husky rides, Northern Lights and toasting marshmallows over fires crackling through the polar darkness.

We were about to meet Santa, a once-in-a-lifetime experience for my daughters, aged six and four. I’d imagined this moment for days, how my heart would flood with joy from their joy. But now I was gripping one child too firmly by the wrist and muttering threats. The girls had spent the last hour pinching each other and complaining of boredom to the point that I was now welling up. They fought, falling into passing elves while I silently calculated how much I’d spent on the six-day holiday, which amounted to paying several thousand pounds to spike my cortisol levels in a different country.

We were staying in igloo-style cabins on Lake Olkkajärvi. Moomin-shaped ice sculptures were dotted around, torches burned and a row of sledges were lined up to transport luggage. Only my family found a different use. After dinner the previous evening, my younger daughter had refused to wear her snowsuit. It was -17C and it hurt to inhale, yet she’d gone into a stage of rigor mortis as I’d attempted to slide her in. Carrying her out under one arm, I put her on the sledge for my husband to drag back to the cabin.

A blizzard whipped around, wind needling my eardrum as she lay in nothing more than base layers. Delighted, her sister asked if her tears would turn to ice. None of this was their fault. The reality was that the temperature was too extreme, they were too young, my expectations too high.

Now, as we reached the front of the queue a pair of elves welcomed us into the grotto.

“Come in,” said Santa, an ample unit who filled his armchair. The girls exchanged looks, their mouths falling open. With a beard down to his lap, pince-nez glasses and felt boots covered in snow, he almost made me believe again.

“Now, have you been good?” he asked.

“Not really,” I said.

“Oh, well. Perhaps if you are good, I may stop by your house next week?” he said, his mouth twitching.

They nodded as he handed them giftbags with bows, and we posed for a photograph in which my left eye was brimming with tears – one for the mantelpiece. Outside, the girls tore off and I found a barmaid dressed as Elsa from Frozen to pour me a lingonberry vodka. I didn’t care if it was five o’clock somewhere, it was midday in Finland and it was time to Let it Go. Over the final two days we gave the girls free rein to drive snowmobiles, pet huskies and eat all the sugar. We returned home, everyone’s festive dreams roundly fulfilled.

Moonlight Express: Around the World by Night Train by Monisha Rajesh (Bloomsbury, £22) is available from observershop.co.uk

Monisha’s top three Lapland tips

1. Pack for ultra-cold Bring waterproof, insulated boots. You can never have too many layers. Take two of every item for children (gloves/hats/scarves)
2. Buy massive cookies Ride the reindeers. Feed the huskies. Toast all the marshmallows. Eat sweets at 10am. You will never do this trip again, so go all in, expense be damned
3. Be flexible With changeable weather and constant darkness it’s wise to plan activities both indoors and out, including trips to the Arktikum Science Centre, SantaPark and Santa Claus Village

It started, as most things do when you’re a 40-year-old mother of two, with a WhatsApp group post, on the first day of June. “CAMPING 2025.” I took this as a threat. Camping! Me? Surely a guaranteed way for me to have some sort of public breakdown in front of strangers.

Within two minutes a splinter group formed. “Why don’t we just… let the dads and kids go without us?” one friend suggested. “We could head to my grandparents’ place in Paris?” said another. I congratulated myself on my phenomenal choice in mum friends and opened eurostar.com.

Turned out another mother was headed to Paris that weekend. Beyoncé. Eurostar prices rocketed to something closer to a Blue Origin launch. Hmm. I’d also just read The Tail End by Tim Urban, which points out that by the time your child leaves home at 18, you’ve already used up 93% of your in-person time with them. He writes, too, about how few summers we really get with them. Not scientifically precise, but enough to destroy you while you’re making packed lunches. Or say yes to your first camping trip.

The group couldn’t believe I’d never camped before. Sure, I’ve been to festivals where the tent was mostly decorative – a place to do my eyeliner – but not this. Not actual camping. With children aged two and five. No electricity. A compost toilet across a field. That’s not a holiday.

I Googled the campsite, Church Farm, near Stevenage, and realised it was close enough to London that if it was truly awful, I could order an Uber home. Something I couldn’t do on our first post-lockdown holiday with children: Mallorca, 2021. I was mid-hellish pregnancy. My toddler was teething. Our friends, who were bringing the toys, cancelled last minute (passport drama). It rained for five days. We spent it under duvets watching Paw Patrol in Spanish. I cried hourly.

People say that holidays with children are just parenting in a different location. I’d argue they’re parenting elsewhere, without any of the things that help you stay sane. Ahead of the trip I checked the forecast daily and packed enough toys to open a shop. Thank God it all worked out.

The dad who organised it had grown up camping in places like Yosemite. He had all the gear and could answer all of my stupid questions. We arrived via a local Lidl around 6pm, to sun-drenched fields, kids flinging themselves into a nature-based joy you don’t come across easily in Hackney. We pitched our tent. By “we”, I mean my husband did it. And by “our” I mean, “the tent we borrowed from my brother-in-law”. I helped with the setting up by ensuring everyone had a cold glass of rosé and easy access to salted crisps. That first night was not without sleep. But I did not rise the following morning in any state of rest. My husband cleverly suggested we put our children on the double airbed so he and I could have individual ones. That helped somewhat. But it didn’t remove the fact that airbeds are awful, or prevent other campers having a massive, drunken laugh until the early hours.

We cooked on a rota. Over the firepit our experienced camp friend brought along. That was fun. Felt pretty great sizzling bacon outside for breakfast. The hay bales were a nice touch, too. More for aesthetics than helpful furniture though. On Saturday, I hid in the car with my toddler watching Bluey, so I could zone out and everyone else could have a break from his adorable reign of terror.

That evening, that magical solstice sunset, it hit: when you strip everything away, small things feel like a win. The sandwich platter we ate in a pub garden. Way better than it needed to be. The enamel mugs of chilled wine. The way I relaxed because I wasn’t in a hotel, judging the lighting or wine list. And yes, this realisation also chimed with the precise moment my friend surprised us with a round of ice-cold margaritas. Delicious fish stew followed. Kids got sticky with marshmallows before crashing out. The grown-ups stayed up late. Giggling like at a teenage sleepover, except we’re all in our 40s and no one’s pretending to be cool.

You don’t get to do that much as adults, share those bits around the edges of a day. The first cup of coffee. Midnight tea. It was intimate, unexpected. Beautiful. Something beautiful, too, in making the most of a finite period of time. Knowing there are maybe only six or seven magic summers left. An unspoken promise between friends to try our best for our children.

I’m not saying camping is like childbirth, but it’s funny how quickly you forget you don’t sleep or ache, constantly. My children will be almost four and six years old next summer. Would I prefer to go to Paris instead of camping with them? Of course. Will I go camping to that same field, with those same friends, for the next six or seven summers? Absolutely.

Emily’s top three camping tips

1. Do a cooking rota That way everything is fair, and you can relax for several of the meals
2. Talk about money Do it upfront, so everyone knows the rough cost
3. Take surprise toys Also drinks/snacks to whip out mid-trip and inject some fun into proceedings

In the most practically inconvenient way possible, I had my five children spread out over 16 years, starting when I was 24 and finishing when I was 41. After my third child was born, I was faced with a challenge: what to do on a family holiday to entertain an adolescent boy who suddenly would rather poke his eyes out than spend uninterrupted time with his family, while also keeping his nine-year-old sister happy and breastfeeding a 10-month-old? The solution resulted in us accidentally stumbling upon – or perhaps peddling into – one of the best trips we’ve ever taken as a family.

Completely unprepared, I booked a six-day cycling holiday to Austria, taking on a trip that would start in Linz and end, approximately 250km later (with detours), in Vienna. We stayed in guesthouses and small hotels, our bags transported between each location daily.

Nothing about this trip should have worked. Not only was our 10-month-old daughter Evangeline still breastfeeding, but our nine-year-old daughter Dolly had only just learned to ride a bike. Until a few days before the trip she had done little more than wobble up and down a stretch of 100m of pavement while we shouted encouragement. And Jimmy was crashing into adolescence.

I’m chaotic at worst, disorganised at best. About 40,000 people bike this route in the summer (April until October is the best time of year to cycle the Danube track) and all of them, apart from us, wore Lycra cycling gear, ergonomically designed shoes to make pedalling easier and, perhaps most sensibly, hydration backpacks. The men probably shaved their legs, the trick of the truly pro cyclist, to maximise speed. Some of them saw us, in denim cut-offs and Converse, stopping to drink out of a Thermos, with a baby in a carrier on the back, and literally laughed in our faces.

Against the odds, it was a brilliant holiday, the river a reassuring travelling companion as we tootled past Mitterkirchen Celtic village, a reconstructed working village and Habsburg castles, and through the apple, pear and apricot orchards of the Mostviertel, where acres of fruit trees surrounded remote farmhouses. It left me with a desire to return in the spring, when the blossom must have been truly extraordinary.

If I do, I’ll tell myself – and others – to be more ambitious, as you can bike much farther than you think with young children and it creates a strong sense of achievement as a family. Having said that, the 60km from Spitz to Tulln is quite hard (especially with a baby!), so instead cycle 20km from Spitz to Krems, the final town in the Wachau, then take a ferry from there to Tulln, thus cutting out the least picturesque stretch of the route.

The holiday worked for lots of reasons, like the sense of rising to a challenge against the odds as a family together, as well as the spectacular, sweeping beauty of the Austrian landscape, but perhaps most of all because it gave us that thing that’s often lacking on a family holiday: acres of personal space. When my son found me too bossy and excruciating to look at, he could bike ahead, amusing himself watching a group of lads, not much older than him, fishing and cooking on a barbecue. Picnic lunches on the banks of the Danube meant he wasn’t forced to endure endless, boring restaurant meals, looking surly, as adolescents will, which I’d then resent as a waste of money.

Rather than crying while rubbing sand into her creases, as she might have done on a beach holiday, the baby loved bouncing around on the back of a bike, sleeping for long stretches and then gurgling with delight as her brother and sister whizzed up beside her then roared ahead. And my nine-year-old proved, not for the first time, that she has a resilience and tenacity that will take her far.

Plus, after cycling 45km a day, everyone was exhausted, in a good way, rather than an antsy way. On the final day, as we left the Danube cycle track, the Donauradweg, and biked into Vienna, I had to force back tears. I really, really didn’t want it to end. And honestly, how many family holidays can you say that about?

Clover’s top three cycling tips

1. Consider half-board Leaving your hotel for supper after a day’s cycling with kids is exhausting

2. Skip the sightseeing Cycling with children doesn’t leave much time (or energy) for museum trips, so concentrate on finding pretty picnic spots and good swimming

3.  Invest in a Camelbak They might look a bit over-keen, but they are more practical than a flask, and you will need lots of water. And mosquito repellent

For similar Austrian cycling tours, see Love Velo and Macs Adventure