Can you actually go on holiday without having a car

[AL75]

I was wondering if I can get some advice as I am feeling very low at the moment. Basically I suffer from anxiety and although I can drive I only drive to areas I know and am comfortable with which are limited and never been on the motorway because I have a phobia although I am quite a good driver. With what is going on with the pandemic everyone is looking to go on holiday inland but it seems to me that it is impossible to get anywhere if you aren’t going with your car. Even if you do find a place to stay for example and you initially get there by cab, you may still need transportation to go to see sites etc. Is there anywhere I can go to where everything I need is there with short walking distance? I feel like such a failure as a mum as I can’t take my 12 year old child places and feel stuck :(

I’m always the one who drives when we go away and I seem to have become chief route finder and time/activity planner too. I hanker after some sort of coach tour one day, I know they’d be the worst nightmare of some people, but having someone make the decisions about when/where/how sounds like bliss!

£219 for family of 4 advance purchase. Bristol to Yorkshire. travelling 23 July & 31 July. Family railcard.

And would have been half of that or less if booked 5 weeks ago when the tickets were first released

The GNER route stops at Morpeth - a gateway to the beautiful Northumberland coast. You could get on at Stevenage if you have a connection?

I know you are phobic, but motorway phobias can sometimes be fixed. You can have driving lessons even though you’ve passed your test - I didn’t drive a car when I lived in London for 7 years and had road and motorway driving refreshers when I moved back up north. My cousin had a motorway phobia for about 15 years but decided it was time to take motorway lessons when her daughter started doing really well at archery and needed to go to tournaments out of area. She started slow - quiet motorways at quiet times in the day (sometimes 8am on a Sunday morning!) - and now shares the driving from Lancashire to France when her family goes on holiday. I know it’s a big deal for you, but it can be done.

I would start with a city break so you have enough to do without stressing about going to other places and studying time tables.

We went to York one year and spent all 3 days just on York, so much to do and see. There is a good train link from London and you may just need a cab to take you to the hotel.

Edinburg may also be worth a trip.

For going abroad I can recommend Paris or Amsterdam, so easy to go around.

You can later find other areas where you can then venture out either by taking another train or a cab.

Have you thought about taking some motorway lessons? I hate driving motorways and get really stressed and a driving school around us offers confidence lessons for specific things like parking, motorways, difficult roundabouts etc. It can really boost your abilities.

We did a lovely minibreak in York, it’s great for a couple of days with pre-teens and easily accessible by train from most places.

We're currently having a week on the coast. 2 adults, 3 kids and no car.

Direct train from home to destination. Lots of local amenities and attractions, several coastal walks and cabs to the few things we want to do that require transport.

Hi again, just a thought...get a guidebook like Lonely Plant (from library for free) then look up the place you want to go as there is usually detailed information regarding public transport and attractions.

We don't have a car and while sometimes we take the train and hire a car there (dp doesn't drive and I refuse to do a long drive solo and also- we really like trains!) We also often don't drive at all.

Scarborough is good- enough to do in the town itself and a bus along the coast, but York is also a quick hop on the train and your DC sounds the right age for viking stuff.

We had a great trip island hopping in Scotland as well. Cornwall is good if you stay somewhere like Falmouth with amenities and a train line but avoid more remote villages. What about Kent? Margate 9r Broadstairs and then you can train along the coast and lots going on in the summer.

Isle of Wight!

Years ago I went on the train to Newquay in Cornwall for a week, it was great, there are several amazing beaches in Newquay itself so no need to travel to others plus enough shops /pubs /cafes to keep you fed and entertained.

I've done London, York, Newcastle, Scarborough and Edinburgh with my teen over the last few years, we were planning Amsterdam and Paris too until covid stepped in! All for between a weekend and 4 nights. Did it on quite a tight budget too.
It took good planning and researching places to go and methods of getting there beforehand, finding out about left baggage places at stations or the hotel for example, but it's definitely do-able!
Planned in advance I picked up train tickets quite cheaply compared to what you pay closer to the time, and I booked attractions early to save on those as well.
I enjoyed the planning bit almost as much as the break.

Am a bit sad that it probably won't happen again any time soon as teen is at college with a weekend job now so it'll be trying to sync our time off that'll be the problem.

We've never had a car and manage to go on holiday both here and abroad. As long as a train goes near where you want to go, and you can get a taxi with your suitcases if it's too far from the train station, you can explore from there once you've settled.

We've been to Oxford, Brighton, North Devon, and the Jurassic Coast in Dorset among others, staying in guest houses, hotels and youth hostels, but most of the UK has a train station fairly close.

This isn't really about whether it's possible to go on holiday without a car, is it. Because it's patently bloody obvious that you can.

This is about your anxiety trying to find excuses for not going on holiday. Are you getting help with your anxiety? It's stopping you from doing normal activities now, so please see you GP. You don't have to live with this.

When I was a kid we went to Guernsey. You can fly or get a ferry.

Once there we hired bicycles and cycled everywhere. The island is really small so perfectly doable by bike (our family weren't fitness freaks, but did cycle at home as we didn't have a car). Or you can use buses. It was great fun.

I agree with the PPs above that, difficult though it is, you would be better trying to tackle your anxiety, so that, as a driver and car owner, you have the choice whether to go on holiday in the car or to take the train or a coach, if they seem more practical. Some of the people on this thread don't have that choice in the first place, but you do, if only you can overcome the anxiety.

I'm no expert on driving anxiety whatsoever, but with things like motorways, is it possible to focus on all the positives rather than the very few negatives - namely the high speed (which is the same speed as on dual carriageways anyway)? No pedestrians, no crossings, no roundabouts, no traffic lights, no oncoming traffic, very difficult to get lost as very well signposted long in advance, mostly a dedicated escape lane in case you break down, nobody hassling you to get out of their way if you stay out of the outside lane. Town/city roads have none of these advantages at all, and are actually much harder to deal with.

That said, although you want to have your route (and enough fuel!) and make as many plans as you can, when I was a relatively new driver, I found it helpful to figure that I wasn't driving a hundred miles; I was just driving this half mile, followed by another, then another, then another.... and to take things and deal with them as they come.

As people have said, there are lots of great holidays that you can go on without driving, but it's a shame to decide to exclude an extremely useful option that's available to you. As ChiefBabySniffer said, if you had no car, your child would simply accept that's why it wasn't an option to you, but at the moment, they will have picked up from you that cars are to be feared and, maybe, that only mad/reckless/stupid people would use them for travelling anywhere non-local. In five years' time, they will be able to learn to drive, which is scary for everybody to do; think about the additional anxieties that they will have picked up from you. We need to have a healthy respect for cars and a knowledge of how essential care and safety are in using them, but we shouldn't learn to view them as objects of fear.

@inkyscribbler, could you please suggest a few holiday parks that are genuinely by the sea, pm me if u prefer.

Hope to go away with my disabled DC (by car) but we got caught out a few times by too much of a distance :(

I would love to get there by car but not use it much when there.

@YogaLite the places we've been that have been close haven't also been accessible really... lots of windy costal footpaths with loads of steps down to the beach. There was one in clacton - hoseasons "valley farm" - and felixstowe - "felixstowe beach" again hoseasons - but they weren't the nicest ones we've been to by a stretch. Clacton was a lot nicer than I expected I suppose, but my expectations were low!

The nicest places we've been were charmouth and brixham, but they weren't really accessible I'm afraid.

Thank you inky, yes, we have been to Charmouth and Brixham. Some photos of the parks can be very deceptive, somehow bypassing cliffs in the views

We've done loads of trips without a car, admittedly more overseas, but what about places like Liverpool, Edinburgh or Chester? Lots of options to get to places by train and other MNers may have ideas about places with good bus links.

Also the Torbay area - good bus and ferry links between Torquay, Brixham and Paignton and you can also get to places like Teignmouth and Dawlish (and Exeter) by train.

I don't like motorways either so end up doing fairly long detours at times to avoid the M25 - but as a pp pointed out, city roads can actually be more draining. However, I deal better with them, and I don't get stressed about getting lost - I missed a turn this morning in south-west London and just followed signs to places I knew until I got home.

It sounds like you have anxiety about getting lost too - but (a) that's what satnav is for and (b) the worst thing that can happen if you go the wrong way is that you have to turn round. It's no big deal at all.

I do wish MNers wouldn't always tell people with phobias to see their GP. Even before covid, you couldn't see a GP.

The IOW is great if you don't have a car, it's all in a fairly small area with bus and trains to get around. Get the train to Portsmouth or Southampton then cross from there. Alternatively a city break would work well.