What’s the furthest distance time-wise that you would prefer to drive for a day trip?

[RoseLattice]

Not the maximum but the longest preferred?

Theres a place about 1.5 hours away and I’m hemming and hawing over it. I think my maximum is an hour. I have a friend who will happily drive 2 hours which seems so long to me.

2-2.5hrs I drive a bit with work and will drive that for a meeting so not fussed with that distance

I would say around 2 hours, although there is a particular zoo DD1 wants to go to for her birthday that is 2.5 hrs away and we would do that as a day trip but that would be for a special occasion.

We drove 1 hr 15 mins yesterday just for a standard day out at a NT property.

Three hours each way with stop at services at halfway point. Any longer than that then I think it's more practical to be looking at hotels for an overnight stay.

DH and I would drive to Wales, hike and drive home. That's 3 hours each way. We'd go to the dark peaks with DD to hike. About two hours each way.

To the beach, about 2.5.

So I'd do 3 hours or below.

1.5 hours with toddlers. I'd do 2 with older kids or adults.

Under 3 hrs is fine for day trip. Anything over that I would do an overnight stop. It does also depend on what the activity is and what time it finishes.

Get up and leave early, 3hrs each way, but we've done 4hrs before. Kids just sleep or use iPads.

Up to 2 hours. I decide based on travel vs enjoyment time.
For every hour travel, I have to spend hour to hour and half in location and enjoy. If the thing is only like 1 hour thing, max 30 min travel.

Preferred up to around an hour each way but it depends how much better or more choice there is further away. Max would be 3 hours each way but that would be quite special on a day with good weather. Today we will go 1.5 hours each way but that's partly as lots of houses and gardens are closed down now until next year.

This is really interesting - quite a range of opinions (and distances!). For me. I would drive/

1 hour without thinking about it - so that sort of trip very regularly
1.5 hours would be thought about/ would have to be special
2 hours would be the absolute maximum (bearing in mind you can often hit traffic etc, so it can end up longer than that!). And that would have to be something very special (and likely as not only DD1 would be up for it!).

This is my rule too

PIL live about 90 minutes away we regularly go there to visit and MIL used to come to us to look after ds one day a week, up to three hours I'd consider. 2-2.5 no problem, takes us an hour to get to the M25

I regularly do 1hr 50 mins to my parents as a day trip. Its a long day and an hour and half seems much easier when I do that to see my brother. When I do the long one we make the whole day of it.

Do 90 mins regularly, 2 at a stretch. Over 2 starts to take a toll particularly if there is a lot of motorway involved.

OP asked what our optimal distance was, not whether we would ever consider driving further!

An hour in the car is about optimal for me, or 90 minutes on public transport (because I can sit, chat, read a book etc so it’s less tiring). I have obviously done longer trips, but if it is more than two hours away I start to consider whether I’d be better making a weekend of it.

3 hours each way. We'd generally stay over if it was longer than that. We have done 4.5 hours each way before in a day because we needed to be back but that was far from ideal for us.

I've just been to look online to work this out...

School trip when DD was in Yr5... 3hrs minimum each way. They left at 7.30, got back at 9pm.

Every child thought it was worth it!

I'm amazed how far some people will go for a daytrip. Although I notice many of the crazier times were posted overnight so probably not by people in the UK. There's so much to do within an hour of our house I'd rarely travel longer than that for a day out.

I’d prefer to drive for an hour or less.

I’m prepared to drive for up to 2 hours, if it’s just me driving.

Anything more than that, it’s either an overnight trip, a train journey or my DH driving.

I presume you live in a major city then...

When my son was at university, I would regularly visit to go for lunch/ a mooch around the city for a couple of hours, which took about 1hr 30 mins each way, and I never considered it particularly arduous.

I'm amazed that people think that over an hour is a long drive for a day trip when I, and lots of people I know, drive further than that several times a week for evenings activities such as DC's sports. It depends hugely on where you live, what the roads are like and what the traffic is like.
I'm surprised so many people seem to view an hour as a long drive wherever they live though as surely even for people who live in urban areas that is not an unusual daily commute? When we lived in a big city it used to take me an hour to drive less than 10 miles to work.

If going north or east, 2 hours. If driving south then 1 hour, 1.5 at a push but traffic can be horrendous

2 hours to the coast. We do that occasionally.

4 hours to PiL's - definitely a weekend trip.

Three hours each way in a day is about my limit. We have relatives that far away who we see about once a year, so DH & I sometimes share the driving and do one way each.