Alternative to family holidays at in-laws in Europe

[MaybeSwitzerland]

we have always holidayed in Europe at my in laws property. Cheap ish drive, and then food costs only, which suits our modest budget.

We have 2 teens who enjoy the local community pool, the nearby lake and rivers, the food and chilling, mostly. We are also quite easy and enjoy relaxing with water nearby.

for a range of reasons, we cannot do this again in the future.

I work hard all year, my teens are getting older and I know they won't likely be coming with us on holidays in 4 or 5 years, and i would really like to plan something nice for next year.

I am at loss regarding what we could do instead, with a similar smallish budget or just a bit over. I have never holidayed elsewhere than the family place since being an adult.

We are restricted by the fact that we cannot fly due to the dog, who is old and frail and cannot go to kennels. We live North of the UK, in a region where there is a lot of rain - seeing the sun is also really Important to me.

has anyone got a gem of a destination that we should consider?

If you’re happy driving on the continent then you’ve got lots of options.

We find Portugal a lovely place to have a driving holiday, very affordable and good roads. We’ve done the ferry to Santander before and then driven across to Porto before working our way down the coast. We really liked Nazare and Aveiro for affordable beach towns in Portugal. It is a long ferry though and obviously you’d have to get down to Portsmouth first. Then you’d have driving there.

There are lots of options in France which are much closer driving wise. Brittany is lovely and very doable driving from the UK - we love Auray, Pont Aven, Saint Cado and Perres-Guirac.

I think it’s probably worth deciding how much driving you would be willing to do to get somewhere, and whether you want to drive to one place and stay or have more of a touring holiday where you stay in lots of different places.

good point - at the moment, we drive about 20hours split over 2 or 3 days to get to our destination. I am not sure we could do much more, this is with a shuttle crossing.

there may be some ferries we could take all the way to Portugal. We went there once with work and I really enjoyed it. I ll have a look at this. I ll also look at camping in France in Brittany, hopefully still quite affordable! thank you!

It depends a lot on what you like to do.

I personally am not a fan of Southern Europe in July/August, too hot.

You could go to Germany, lots of differnt areas like flat north with seaside (North and Baltic sea), or lake district north-east of Berlin.

Middle range mountains or Alps, hiking, outdoor activities, history.

It may be difficult though to find a s/c flat/house who allows a dog.