Anyone else find U.K. holidays hard work and exhausting?

[Swimminglesson7]

With young(ish) children, I find U.K. breaks a big effort. Glamping in cold, rainy woodlands, staying in a holiday cottage and driving to a heaving beach daily…

Having to pack for every weather eventuality: sandals and factor 50, jumpers and wellies.

Am I alone in finding U.K. holidays to be not-quite-holidays?! The kids are having a blast. But I’m sick of lugging picnics and bodyboards and water bottles from one spot to another, then cooking and cleaning endless meals in a cottage or glamping site. I feel like I’m almost entirely servicing their fun.

(Meant to be lighthearted!)

No, but then we haven’t changed our holiday plans since having ds. We still do the things we did before having him which is go to museums, castles and historic houses. Ds loves it.

While we might go to a park or a beach for an hour or two when on these holidays the day isn’t dominated by that kind of thing.

I didn't find any holidays with children 'holidays' - just the same stuff somewhere else. On the plus side at least the views were different!
Enjoying my holidays with secondary age and above children far more :).

Sun longers round the pool, jumping in for a dip if it gets too hot. cocktails to cool down, beaches with stuff already set up so you don't have to lug stuff round. Bar snacks in the little bar cafe.

Snoozing in the afternoon. Guarantee of nice weather every day.

Exploring towns and villages in a moomoo and flip flops 😂

Walking to restaurants for food in balmy weather.

You can't beat it

We are planning a wet weekend in noth Yorkshire and are already looking for stuff we can do and have to book it all in advance, take clothing for all occasions.

Bit of a ball ache really haha.

You're doing it wrong. Leave the kids with grandma and you go for a luxurious week in a Highland spa hotel. Its a much better way of doing a UK holiday.

When my dc were little i used to say holidays had gone basically for me. ! We used to climb and travel pre dc but with two who were travel sick a holiday anywere was difficult from the start. I did enjoy the simple beeach holiday momemts but oh the packing and the sheer amount of stuff. !!! I used to joke there is no such thing as a hoiliday when you have dc. .
!

Yeah I hate it. Battling with shit weather, if there's a pool it'll be too cold to use it, stony beaches, expensive. We're just not bothering until we can safely and comfortably go overseas again. We live in a nice bit of the UK so there's plenty of countryside and NT places within an hour or so for day trips.

It does get better as the kids get older. Although once they get to 12/13 all you get is whinging, but at least you can go out and leave them behind.

We normally holiday abroad but stayed in the UK this year with our preschooler. The most successful holiday involved a week’s AirBnB at a house 10 metres from the beach, 1.5 hours driving door to door, a supermarket shop arriving that evening with a metric fuckton of easy food and really low expectations. Weather is key imo, which is obviously brilliant .

Yes I hate them, I need sunshine and heat and an aeroplane to take me there. I want lovely hotels with clean fresh bedding every day,I want to sit on a balcony on a balmy evening with cocktails and I want to skinny dip in a warm ocean at midnight..you just cant do that in skegness!!!

I haven’t done many UK holidays, but all the threads I’ve seen on here about having to book anything remotely popular in advance puts me off.

Would you normally stay in a hotel when you went abroad? So no cooking and cleaning?

Same shit, different location, none of your home comforts.
Kids love it though, so we all just plod on through.

@tiredanddangerous

It does get better as the kids get older. Although once they get to 12/13 all you get is whinging, but at least you can go out and leave them behind.

Currently on holiday with a 14 year old and still plenty of whinging unfortunately!

OP people will soon pile on to tell you that the UK is a beautiful country, they have never taken a holiday outside of the UK/never taken a holiday, you are supporting the UK economy and mainly you are doing it wrong. Also there will be loads of assumptions that people who prefer to go abroad go to Benidorm or All inclusive (which is totally fine btw if it works for you).

I have travelled a lot in the UK. I have has some nice breaks but it is never what I would term 'a holiday'. The bloody cost is off the scale and it just does not match the freedom of going abroad. Same old, different place. Even self catering abroad is more fun with the markets and products in supermarkets. And eating out is usually cheaper and far better. The weather is unpredictable in the UK, you have to drive and spend money for crap attractions. The cost of entry here is far more than many places abroad. People bleat on about national trust membership, my parents had that and I really do not want to see another stately home in the UK again. All very lovely but spending every holiday/weekend at various stately homes has made me rather immune to their charms.

As for supporting the UK economy- the tourists who do that come from overseas. They do not book some cottage in Cornwall and plan which beach/what to take for a picnic/ join the national trust. They fly in, visit our major tourist attractions and flash their cash.

I think holidays with young children are exhausting whatever you do and wherever you go.

No interest in booking a UK holiday for exactly that reason. I'm a massive fan of French campsites, brilliant facilities, reliable weather, entertainment, pools and water slides, on site bar, playgrounds, groups of children for the dcs to play with. Never found anywhere in the UK that is anywhere near it.

See we only go abroad every few years as I hate the airport, flying and transferring bits.
I love holidays in the uk. We do cosy countryside log cabins or nice apartments in seaside holiday resorts.
We love it. We do eat out the majority of the time though. The only food I take is bread, milk, cereal and snacks.
We had a week on the Yorkshire coast last week and it was glorious but we did drop on with the weather. The only downside to uk holidays is rain which can happen a lot unfortunately.

Yes, they're shite.

We've completely given up on uk holidays. We've never once had decent weather, it's always been dreary. And expensive!

We spent more once on a week in Cornwall than the cost of a hotel we love in the Canaries. If I'm doing my own cooking and washing it's not a holiday, might as well be at home.

No because we just took the kids to the places we liked mostly, National trust, lots of hiking, bird watching etc.

Yep I hear you OP. It's basically about filling in the hours and hoping you wear them out so you get a quiet night. Mine is 6 so I reckon I've got maybe 6 more summers to do this type of stuff. Bet I miss it then!

@ChocolateCakeYum

No, but then we haven’t changed our holiday plans since having ds. We still do the things we did before having him which is go to museums, castles and historic houses. Ds loves it.

While we might go to a park or a beach for an hour or two when on these holidays the day isn’t dominated by that kind of thing.

This. We have a 5 and 3 year old and never had the experience of this sad " same shit, different location" trope that gets wheeled out 20 seconds into any discussion about holidays with small children.

We will be having 4 days in Yorkshire in August in a cottage. It won't be the "same shit" because we will be visiting sites we've never been to before and eating in places we've never been and nobody is going off to work or school or nursery.

No, you're not alone.

See this thread with 350 messages from a couple of days ago

UK holidays are hard work

I think it's more type of holiday than location of holiday.

Cooking and cleaning is surely as shit in Spain as it is in England.

Paying for rain is like going to the dentist, a giant expensive chore and a massive waste of time. Why would I do that?
Even if lucky enough to get good weather, I'm still not going to have a pool outside my apartment 🤷‍♀️.

Yes I'm on one right now and it's shit. Everything stupidly expensive, can't get into a restaurant, no takeaways either, weather sucks. We'd have been better staying at home and doing day trips.