How far are you willing to travel for a day out?

[MsWalterMitty]

I love in the countryside with lots of windy roads and very poor public transport links.

I wonder whether my thinking is skewed due to the windy roads. But for a typical day out with the kids, say on a normal weekend I am happy to drive up to 45 mins in the car to a destination... this is approx 15 miles due to the roads. So I’d say less than 20 miles is my norm.

Anything more than that would be a special occasion/very rare. Bit anything more than 30 miles I would want to be stopping over!

Honestly it depends on the reason for a day out. I am lucky I have many beautiful places within 45 minutes of my house. I am willing to travel up to two hours each way if meeting up with family (halfway pretty much for us), but ideally stay overnight. I have taken the train to Dublin for exhibitions/shows/concerts and that is a six hour round trip.

3 hours each way for a day trip. A bit longer if it’s somewhere special (eg, for me, Midlands to Wisley).

I travel 100 miles a day return for work! Twice a week.

We do an 8 hour round trip to visit our DD’s grave a few times a year. Make it a day out for the DC with a walk along the beach and a nice dinner in a pub.

2-3 hours for the zoo or a theme park wouldn’t bother me.

Mind you we’ve driven from Dorset to Scotland in a day with toddlers, have done many road trips across Europe (3000 mile round trip) and US/Canada with young DC, and DH is a HGV driver and insists on driving all the way so that helps.

I’d do 2 hrs for a good day trip. Prefer up to 90.

2 hrs each way.

1.5 hours for me is normally my maximum before I want to the night.

My nearest shop is a 40 mile round trip, nearest town is an hour away, so for a day trip I'll do anything up to 2.5 hours each way, but I've got 2 small children, when they are older it will probably be easier.

I have grandparents 80 miles away and regularly do that with 2 kids and the dog solo for an afternoon. I grew up doing the same thing so it doesn't seem unusual to me and I wouldn't think twice about doing 100 miles or so for a day trip somewhere nice.

I'd say much upwards of that I would probably want to stay overnight.

Should say 100 miles each way

Most of our days out are under and hour. Though we can be at the beach (in several directions) or two very big cities in that time - and loads of places in between (theme park 40 minutes away at the weekend). Occasionally we go a bit further we have done 2 hours however that is rarely.

I guess we are lucky in where we are located being fairly close to beaches, country parks, just general countryside and a number of big cities including 10 minutes from the motorway.

We regularly travel from east lancs to Edinburgh snd Glasgow for says out.it takes about 3.5 hrs drive or 2.5hrs in the train.
I often fly from Liverpool to Dublin for a say trip. The kids used to find it exciting when they were little! They leave me to it now they older.🤣🤣

Parents are an hour and a bit away. No problem getting there and back in a day.

Parkrun tourism- I’d travel anywhere up to 2 hours to get there ( not every week!). At my local parkrun this week there was a group of visitors who’d left Tralee at 4 am, and we’re heading back same night.

But it’s up to the individual what they feel is reasonable!

We live in London and all our days out are here, apart from a festival when it's back on again. That's 18 miles.

1.5 hours for a half day, 3 hours for a full day

I'm a country dweller and in my experience people are used to travelling longer distances for a lot of things. I don't know anyone who would consider an overnight stop if travelling more than 30 miles - that's very unusual.
It's over 20 miles to school for my children and I regularly drive over an hour each way for their after school activities. For a day trip I'd say anything up to about 3 hours each way is fine. I don't do longer distances than that on a school night as I think it's a bit much, but I've got friends who drive their kids 150 miles each way for evening sports fixtures. We only do that at weekends or occasionally on Friday evenings. We do stay over before some of DS's sports events because they are early starts and I don't fancy leaving home at 5.30am

Probably 90 mins each way at a push. More than that and we'd tend to stay over as have young toddler DC. An hour (so probably 60 miles or so) and would think nothing of it really. We are very near several major roads so can travel a long way in a few hours.

We are travelling 3.5 hours for 2 nights away soon but I wouldn't travel 5 hours plus for just a weekend, it'd need to be Friday to Monday at least.

I’m with you OP but then I hate driving. DH would happily drive 2-3 hours, me probably maximum of an hour.
We live well off the beaten track and being retired I am planning to move into a town as soon as I can purely because I want to be within walking distance of shops etc rather than having to get in the car.

I love south london/surrey borders, I occasionally do 2hr each way day trips to visit friends, otherwise I guess probably wouldn’t do more than an hour/1.5hr each way. My family love 340 miles away and wouldn’t stay less than 3 nights

1.5 hours each way, tops.

Before children upto 3 hours each way. Now with small children out of practice due to lockdowns about 20mins

We regularly do 6 hour round trips. Dh drives for a living so it’s pretty easy driving for him. Anything less than 2 hours one way doesn’t seem like a day out.

I am quite surprised by some of the day trip distances but that might just be because I’ve got car sick kids and don’t really need to travel far for attractions etc.

Bill Bryson said " the amercians think 200 years is a long time, the brits think 200 miles isa long way". DH was born in Canada nothing is less than an hour away Canada and America are huge. I'd do 2-3 hrs each way, but we share the driving which helps.

@ISpyCobraKai

"Around 90 minutes drive, anymore and I'm booking a Travelodge."

Why would you stay in a manky Travelodge when you could stay in a lovely clean Premier Inn!
(Completely missed the point of the thread)