How often do you do days out?

[sausagefingers2]

I’m talking trips out to new places an hour or so drive away? We don’t do it often. Part of the problem is we have a 12 year old and a 2 year old so it’s tricky finding things to do that suit them both.

At weekends I always make sure we spend time outside even if it’s just the local park. We go to libraries, out for food, country parks, dog walks. During the holidays I’ll try to take at least one day annual leave while the little one is at nursery so that the eldest and I can go to the cinema or shopping, things that aren’t possible with the toddler around. Similarly when my eldest is at school I make the most of my day off with the toddler and we do play dates, farm parks, soft play and so on. We just don’t go very far and I feel like they maybe ought to experience new places more often. Weekends are also our time for catching up on gardening and chores so the kids will have a lot of downtime too.

We have one abroad holiday per year and try and do the odd night/weekend away. But I see people going on days out every weekend - the popular thing at the moment seems to be hiking and I can’t think of anything worse with my two!

Would love to know how your weekends are spent. Do you do long trips out often? If so where and what? And especially if you have a big age gap - what do you do?!

2 yr gap here which makes things easier. Weekends revolve around extracurriculars really and catching up with friends. We stay pretty local but have a lot on the doorstep. Cinema trips are every school holiday, same for theatres, museums, etc. Holidays involve lots of day trips.

Most weekends - a mix of hiking, biking, water sports and attractions in different areas

We do a day out like you describe maybe once a month or so, we have 4 kids between 12 and 2 so agree it's hard when they're at different stages! Otherwise smaller park trips and things locally, our older kids often have activities on weekends too.

We have activities every weekend so we only do longer days out during school holidays, inset days, bank holidays etc. We try to organise trips on every bank holiday and weekends during school holidays, as it's the only chance we get to be able to visit places further away.

On normal weekends we do trips mainky within London after an activity, which often includes places we haven't been to before and tourist attractions, but they don't take long to travel to as we live pretty centrally. Our weekends are busy and we are usually out of the house from 7.30am-5pm (doing an activity then a trip out). Our garden is zero maintenance! We don't just stay local to us, we tend to travel all over London (and just outside). I'd get bored of just visiting the same nearby playgrounds and soft plays, and I'm always hearing about a new place that's opened or a new exhibition so there's always something different to explore. We don't do many hikes, my dcs like to visit big parks/playgrounds, museums, seaside trips, galleries, theatres, theme parks, zoos, etc. We go to a kid's theatre or concert show a few times a month.