First world problem

[Enoughofstuff]

A friend of mine owns a holiday house on the coast. She would like us to stay with them regularly there (2-3x a year). We have stayed once, several years ago, but I found it all quite stressful because DC are different ages and also friendship dynamics when staying with others.
We don’t see this friend a lot, but it seems like she wants her school holidays to be based at their holiday house (fair enough) and then have a constant revolving door of visitors, including us, because she is a very social person.
i don’t really want our friendship to be mostly spending time at the holiday house. AIBU?

Then don't go?

I would not want to do this either. We have a few long term friends and we see the easiest ones either at theirs or ours for 2 nights max...no more, as we adhere to the old adage of 'visitors, like fish, tend to go off after 3 days'.

Just say no. Don’t even consider allowing other people to dictate how you spend your holidays. To be fair to your friend, she may not even know you feel like this.
Probably, your main problem is how you are going to tell her. You need to work that one out yourself.

Then say no.

What’s the issue? Say you have other plans.

To be honest, I’d make an effort outside of the school holidays.

But also, I’d take up the option of a pretty much free holiday!

Say it doesn't really work for you, but you'd love to meet up with her at x to do y.

What she wants is her own issue, what you want and what is best for your family is yours. If you fancy a few nights every few years then go but if not, say no.

Its not a summons!

If you don't want to go, the don't.

I don't see the problem. Just say no. I don't like staying in other people's houses anymore - was fine with it when younger but I don't really enjoy it now. So I say no to friends when they kindly invite us to their holiday homes. Nothing wrong with the invitation and nothing wrong with refusing it.

It sounds like something you can be honest about - that the DC are too far apart in age to really get on as friends and that summers are very busy for you with activities in your own area, but you’d like to see her when she’s not at her holiday home. Not really a big deal.

I know exactly how you feel. We have friends with a holiday home abroad and have stayed there.

It's just all... awkward. Our DC are all adults now and the friends tend to want to make a house party of it with other mutual friends so there's wait for the bathroom, difficult to get any privacy and their annoying dogs are all over the furniture and beds. And they always want to take Ryanair flights together which I find mightily uncomfortable.

We go for a few nights now and again, but I can't say I look forward to it much.

If I didn't look forward to it, Wiltshirehammy I simply wouldn't go. No one has fallen out with me because I've said no to invitations to holiday homes. I actually said yes to going (an hour away at the beach) for a night this month after years of saying no and my friend called me and said "are you sure? I don't want you to feel any pressure" :)

I would hate this, but then I hate staying with other people. If you don't see her very often then presumably you aren't really, really close friends. I understand that the pressure from her must be tedious but surely you can politely tell her that your kids don't align in ages or activities and you have other plans for summer. If it was me I'd quietly let the friendship slide into oblivion.

Our friendship has a long history so I don’t want to let it slide completely. It is tricky though, because our lives are quite different at the moment.
We live on opposite sides of London, so logistics make it hard to spend time together during the school term, because we are both busy with respective DC’s activities.
So that leaves the school holidays when they are mostly at their holiday house…
I am an introvert, so I find the holiday house experience quite the challenge.
i also don’t like the feeling of being the “poor cousin” (my own issue I know and not the main one for resisting going).