Tips on 5 hour car journey with 3 and 1 year old 😬

[Teaandbiscuits16]

We’ve made the ridiculous decision to go away for a family break to Cornwall which is 5 hours away (without stopping!) with our 3 year old DS, 1 year old DD and the dog!!

How do we survive the car journey? I know hope the time away will be lovely once there but I’m absolutely dreading the journey.

You'll need to pencil in a couple of breaks to stretch your legs with children of that age. For your own sanity!

Put the kids to bed in the car at say 7pm and just get it done. It’s the best way we’ve found with young children and travelling to see family 5+ hours away.

5 hours is fine with a couple of stops, maybe one longer stop at a play park/ country park. That’s what we used to do when visiting in-laws.

Family visiting us leave at 4am and the children sleep for most of the way.

I only have 1 and they're now 2y but have done a 4h journey with them several times. We'd time it so we set off around 20mins before nap and they'd sleep around 2h so we'd get around halfway then stop for 40mins and have food and a run around, then the next half of the journey was audiobooks (the Julia Donaldson cds are a hit) books, stickers, snacks (non choking hazard ones). If you do something similar you only have to entertain 1 for the full 5h. Things that you can stick to windows, programmes downloaded onto tablet?
We once tried the nighttime drive and they didn't go to sleep till 9.45 and cried a lot of the way so that didn't work for us!

We got the car ferry to Spain and drove to portugal with a 6 month old and 3 year old. Also driven from Devon to Skye. It was fine.

I recommend, if you don't already have one, headrest screens and dvd player so they can watch the same thing. We brought loads of dvds but only ended up with just one episode of Thomas the Tank Engine on.

Oh, and if possible, we drive through the night to limit the amount of waking hours they spend in the car.

Just did similar with 2 year old.
Took him for a walk with bike whilst dh loaded up car first thing so he wore a bit of energy off. Drove roughy 9.30am-12. Stopped hour for lunch and playground play. Drove 1pm -4pm . He slept about 2hrs of the second half

Had a few small hard back books he could look at, and his comfort teddy. But otherwise he just looked out of window and listened to regular music on the radio.

Either drive overnight or set off just before nap time, and plan a stop at a park/playground with a picnic the bulk of the day. Then set off again towards bedtime, put their pajamas on for I the car and carry them up into beds when you get there. Treat it like a day out, with a 2.5 hour drive either side

Some absolute top tips here, tons I’d never considered so thank you so much! I need to start downloading from Netflix now!

we gound best way to do it, is set off at 4am. pack car carry dc from bed in PJs and blankets into cars seats, the early time and movement of the car means they drop back off. 4 hours later at 8am stop for breakfast and get them dress and washed and do the last leg of your journey.

We did it many times and this worked so well.