Share your favourite holiday memories with Haven: you could win £100. NOW CLOSED

[AnnMumsnet]

We've been asked by the team at Haven Holidays to find out MNers favourite memories of holidays!

Please share on this thread your memories of the first time you took your own children away (if you have been lucky enough to have been on holiday with your LOs): where was it, what was it like for you and for them?!

And what was the equivalent one with your parents? How do you think they compare?

What did you do on your holiday when you were a child compared to what your children do on holiday these days?

What's the strangest holiday souvenir you've ever seen or treated yourself too? Maybe a model donkey from Spain? Or some weird drink that tasted good when you were away!?

Add your thoughts and memories on this thread and you'll be entered into a prize draw where one MNer will win a £100 voucher Love2Shop voucher (an excellent chance to stock up on the pre-holiday essentials as the vouchers are accepted at 20,000 stores including Boots, W H Smith, Debenhams, Halfords and Matalan). Prize draw: Monday 31st March 9am.

Please note comments made on this thread may be used by Haven on their pages on Mumsnet, in social media or possibly elsewhere.

Thanks and good luck
MNHQ

PS for everything you need to know to make the most of your Haven holiday. From outdoor experiences for the whole family to on-site restaurants for the fussiest of eaters do check out the NEW Haven pages on Mumsnet

Holiday with Mum & brother to Clacton in a static caravan for a long weekend. Stayed out to long and running back I ducked under a fence and ran into barbed wire missing my eyes by eights of an inch. Opticians when we got home.

my first holiday with my parents was to cornwall. My dad loves fishing and would take us out on the mackerel boats. You kept what you caught and we used to eat fresh mackerel for tea. We stayed in a caravan by the sea. We always bought those cheap surfing boards and played in the sea.

I still do the same activities with my children apart from the mackerel fishing, as that would now be deemed a health and safety hazard.

Norfolk Broads on a boat trip, the summers were so long and hot then.

Best souvenir - a head x-ray: when my parents took me to Spain for my 3rd birthday, I climbed up to reach my birthday cards and fell on the hard floor.

Planning to get the x-ray framed when I buy my first house!

This one is in wales; and on the holiday park they had a indoor swimming pool with slide and every morning we used to go swimming and on to the slide :)

Definitely my son who has severe Autism bonding with the ducks at one of the sites near Blackpool last year.

In Cornwall, we all decided to roll down a grassy hill, we all got to the bottom, my sister coming last, when she got up she was covered in cow pats!

We had holidays every year at chapel st leonards in a caravan and i have such a fond place in my heart for that place even now, as we had the best times there..played from dawn till dusk we did

Every year we went to Rhyl in North Wales and stayed in a caravan for a week. We loved it, playing on the beech if the weather was kind and spinning on rides at the funfair. We ate fish and chips and wandered through Conwy Castle and along the harbour watching the tiny fishing boats bring in mussels. At night we tried to catch the very fast rabbits that ran through the caravan parks.

DD is too little at the moment so we haven't taken her away quite yet.

I used to go camping in France every year and I hope to do the same for her as she gets older.

I bought one of those gimmicky Eiffel Tower key rings one year!

Hard to pinpoint one but I particularly remember taking the ds to Florida just after my chemo had finished.
Dh and I had joked pathetically that you must go to Disneyland if you have cancer!
At the time the outlook was bleak but I distinctly remember sitting on a beach looking at the sea and thinking
"I'm going to be ok" very strange experience.
I am ok twenty years later btw.

My other fav holidays are after my divorce, taking the dc abroad on my own and realising I could do anything and didn't need my x. Very good for the dc to see me able to do things we had always done.

My favourite holiday memory is when we went to Turkey with my family (hubby and 5 kids) and my mum, dad, sister & a family friend came along with us. My hubby organized it and it was fabulous all going away together as a group and it was great having extra help with the kids. We went out for boat trips, beach days, exploring ruins days, swimming, Turkish markets etc. Hubby & I even got out once on our own one evening when my sister baby sat for us. That was the second time we had ever gone out on our own since we had had children! It was a totally fab holiday and one I'd love to repeat, but sadly we haven't been away since 2007!

It has to be our last holiday to dubai as daughter played with sand and we lounged on the big sun loungers.

We spent a week every summer at Primrose Valley when we were growing up. We always looked forward to being in the caravan and going to the club in the evening. The live music and magicians were fantastic and the talent shows were always really entertaining. I loved the daytime stuff too - riding around the site on bikes and the swimming pool was great. We've been in recent years too with our own children and had a great time. All the staff on site have been really accommodating and friendly.

My favourite holiday memory is from the very first time we took our little ones away. We took them to Dorset where we spent a great many hours on the beach (their first time to the coast too) hunting for fossils. We didn't find any but the smiles on the faces of our boys told us they didn't care. We were so happy. My youngest kept making a bee-line for the sea, desperate to hit the waves so we had to keep his reins on! He's still a real dare devil now. We've never been lucky enough to take our children abroad but I never went until I was much older and I never felt I was missing out and I don't feel that our children are missing out either. You can't beat well planned holiday on the British Isles. :)

I just remember being on a beach and being so happy with my bucket and spade. It's one of my earliest memories.

To date (hoping there will be more!) it is our first holiday abroad to SPain. Stayed with little girl (18 months) and my parents in a lovely villa meaning we got lots of privacy to splash in our pool and get ready for the day at our own pace. She discovered croissants - which she loved! She discovered the beach too and the delights of building sandcastles or mixing sand and water in a bucket. Memories and photos to last a lifetime!

6 Years ago we went on a camping trip to Cornwall, We were sat outside the tent at night the weather was glorious My Daughter (Then 5) was sleeping inside, she came to the entrance and said, "I can't sleep because of the eyes" "What eyes" we asked, pointing out to the open blackness she said "Those eyes" I couldn't see anything for darkness my husband then pick up his torch and flashed it.... It was the strangest sight ever there were hundreds if not thousands of rabbits all over the camp site.
After realising what "the eyes" were my daughter happily took herself back to bed.

My favourite first holiday memory is probably when we were in Portaventura was Dd... She was nearly 1 and Woody Woodpecker came and sat with her at breakfast.

She was just babbling away quite the thing as if it were perfectly normal and blowing raspberries. I laughed so hard!

My first holiday with my parents was when I was 2- we stayed in a caravan in Spain. The boys in the next caravan used to pass their comics to me through the window in the evening and so I probably started on the beano earlier than most

Strangest holiday souvenir was probably the strange 'sculptures' that we brought back from Tokyo... Turns out they are actually men's sex toys.

Oops. They look amazing though.

Actually some of my favourite holiday memories are because of Haven. I used to go to Wild Duck in Norfolk with my parents. It's such a beautiful place. It's close to the beach, there's great entertainment on site, and the location is gorgeous, in the middle of a forest.
I had such a fantastic time every time we went, and we went back year after year.

As a child all our holidays were taken by going to stay with relatives in the country/near the beach. I was an only child so this had the advantage that I had cousins to play with. Holidays with our children have always been staying with relatives. Apart from the infiltration of games machines the holidays are very similar - long days on the beach, walks in the countryside, etc. The major difference is whereas my cousins and I were allowed to walk a couple of miles on our own down country lanes to a secluded beach there is no way I would allow my DC to do that now!

My first holiday with my parents...we went abroad to visit the homeland. I was 3 and a very curious child. Mum passed away a few years after so the memories are very precious.

We loved going on holiday to a hired caravan on the coast as children. Played on the beach all day and threw crusts on to the roof of the caravan at night so we could hear the footsteps of the birds eating them in the morning. Simple happy times

I was the haven holiday princess (I think it was the blue straw hat that won it for me!). I'm pretty sure it's the equivalent of winning the x-factor these days.

Funny as it sounds it was last summer holidays at the Haven park near Southampton/brighton. The evening entertainment for kids was the best we've ever experienced at Haven and I have many happy memories of dancing to Choco Choco Chocolate, and doing gangnam with my daughters and husband every night. Loved it so much we downloaded all the music we heard when we got home and we regularly have home discos to remember our time there.