Kirstie Allsop's 15 Year Old Son

Again, another post by the terminally envious of other people's money. You make nasty assumptions are are not ashamed to share them.
From your post, I could make many assumptions about you and your family, none of which may be true, but once they are in the public forum, someone will believe them
No need to be so bloody nasty about a stranger

She’s having the most amazing life and I’m pleased for her. Slightly sad as the guy she met in Vienna is Canadian and they’ve been to a year now and she’s looking at moving to Canada. I was a bit adventurous when I was younger, went backpacking round Asia in my own, I’ve hitchhiked across a few African countries with a friend. But she has worse itchy feet than me. And I’ve turned into an anxiety ridden middle aged person who’s nervous about going to Cornwall 🤷‍♀️😆🙈

Poor lad, still being babied. A lot of students will be starting Uni in the next few weeks and I hear some horror stories about their inability to cope with living away from Mummy, some parents do their offspring no favours.

What a wonderful piece of family history!

I'm a lot older than you all and really at the age of 13/14 I was going to all sorts of places by myself, or with a friend of the same age. I think in the years since then parents have become very unwilling to allow their children to 'grow up', to take risks which are often quite small and develop resilience. It wasn't that our parents were uncaring but many of my friends left school at 16 and the following Monday were at work with no allowances made for their youth. They were grown up.
He probably had a great time and learnt new stuff.

What a brilliant parent you are to encourage and support her doing this!
Aren't you envious- I'm jealous of her!!

What a fantastic experience! If you know enough people, and Kirstie is definitely a woman with connections, then accommodation becomes less of an issue - you stay with Aunty Whoever at her place in Paris, then dad's old pal in Cologne, then nip down to St Tropez and spend a week with the rest of the immediate family in a villa, head off to Italy to stay with your travelling companion's cousin in Milan, then off to the Greek Islands for a few nights at the villa being stayed in by the travelling companion's family, then off to Seville to spend a few nights with another school friend's family....it would be easy enough to do, I would think, given a wide enough network of family and friends.

Better than being at home vaping Spice.

Some kids can cope with travel at 15 (and he could actually be practically 16), some can’t. I am sure Kirstie and her partner are best placed to make this call.

God no- we’ve actually just been interrailing with our kids for a month and there’s no way our 16 year old is ready to do it on his own!

It’s fine. Maybe he is very mature for his age.

Oh yes, let's make massive nasty judgemental assumptions about someone and their life just because you are jealous

I went inter-railing just after my 16th birthday with a 17 year old German friend. ( my exchange) . We had a great time, spent time researching places to stay, budgeted our money. No issue.

Unless meeting family who would be responsible for them it would be a firm 'no' from me. I don't know the rules where they are travelling but if something went wrong in the UK for a 15 year old unaccompanied traveller it would be quite complex, eg, if they lost their passport, needed medical treatment, had to deal with police, needed accommodation etc how would this be managed?

Unnecessarily bitchy.

And this is your business how?
So, she's bought up a confident, articulate and adventrous young man.
That's fabulous
She obviously risk-assessed his capability, and that of his friends
We need more parents like her. Many kids her age are either surgically welded to their phones or scared of the8r own shadow, won't take a phone call from a friend unless they have texted them to tell them they want to talk, and think the world owes them.

I wouldn’t allow it this young but I did allow my dds to go to Italy and Greece with groups of close friends when they were eighteen, between school and university. But I knew the friends and many of their parents and there were sensible girls in both groups.

Surely anything that puts distance between oneself and Kirstie Allsop is a good idea?

Unless he is staying in youth hostels, I suspect he’ll be staying with friends and relations. Many hotels and air bnbs don’t let you sign for accommodation until you are over eighteen or twenty-one in some cases.

You can’t even stay in a Premier Inn by yourself unless you’re over 18 in this country, so how the hell does this inter-railing work abroad for a 15/16 year old?

DS (17) has only just flown by himself, staying with a friend and his family, but we made sure (after doing research) that he had all the relevant forms, address of where he was staying, our consent for him to fly etc, as he’s still classed as a child (put you still pay adult fares - another thread) and there might have been issues at passport control.

I did this at 15 with a 16 year old friend. It was after my o’levels. We mostly stayed with friends and relatives and had an absolute blast. That was two girls. As long as you have clear “this is what to do if it goes wrong” I don’t see the problem, especially in mobile phone era. Also: clearly he was fine and her judgment was right. Is none of your business and independence is a great trait to foster. My kids (DD15 & DS 17) not confident enough to do this yet, but certainly travel around the UK on their own. Not sure how this is different.

Brave parenting. He's probably had quite an independent life so she knew he wouldn't be phased.

Would love to have that level of confidence in my children as they grow.

The confidence this sort of stuff gives you is amazing. I encouraged Dd to travel by herself and with friends abroad from a young age. She went to Beijing with friends at 16yo for the summer. Went to Paris when she was 17yo with a friend for a week. Covid stopped play for a couple of years but then she was off again.

She’s travelled to about 20 countries on her own now. She thinks nothing of getting a flight to Slovenia or similar on her own and staying in a hostel and meeting people and doing stuff with strangers. She went to Vienna for a long weekend and met a guy and didn’t come back for a month and they went to about 5 different countries during that time. She’s currently in Croatia.

Sounds reasonable to me!

What an adventure. I doubt he's been roughing it in the cheapest places to be fair. I'd have let mine do this........cautiously and with boundaries etc.