Share your top tips for travelling abroad with young children with Brittany Ferries - chance to win a £300 voucher NOW CLOSED

[AmeliaMumsnet]

Travelling with young children isn’t always plain sailing from the start, but, if you get it right, showing your children a new part of the world can be a fantastic experience. So, to avoid those horror stories about packing all the wrong things; choosing a destination that’s not quite as child-friendly as it promised; and temper tantrums along the way, Brittany Ferries want to hear your top tips for travelling abroad with the little ones.

Brittany Ferries say “if having young children has put you off taking that holiday abroad, then think again, think family-friendly France. Sailing from Portsmouth, Poole or Plymouth we offer more choice of sailings than anyone else and our onboard service is designed with little ones in mind. What’s more, we can also arrange your holiday accommodation. Our choice of sail & stay holidays are perfect for young families with a chalet camping holiday offering fun for all with lots to see and do both on and off site. And, as all our holidays include return sailings with your car, so you can pack all you need for your time away.” You can find out more here.

What’s your go-to for keeping the kids entertained throughout the journey and avoiding the dreaded ‘are we there yet’? Do you have any tips for encouraging fussy eaters to enjoy some local cuisine? Is there a particular part of France you’ve come to love as a family holiday destination? Whether it’s useful packing advice or just a recommendation for a great family activity, don’t keep it to yourself. Share yours on this thread to help other parents enjoy their holidays with young kids to the fullest and you’ll be entered into a prize draw for a £300 Love2Shop voucher.

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Thanks, and good luck!

MNHQ

I recommend travelling at night time if possible. Take plenty snacks and familiar toys and activities for older children. Have a basic first aid kit with you including paracetamol plasters rehydration sachets etc.

Agree with plenty of snacks and distractions. I made my own activity book from printable colouring (fav characters), wordsearches etc. Dc loved it.

If you ever have to wait for long to board a ferry/plane/train/bus, always have bottle of bubbles to blow at them to pass the time:

For babies - I promise it'll stop crying them crying and leave them forever amused and bewildered at the floating bubbles!

For toddlers - they run around trying to pop them (and hopefully tires them out too)

Toddler+ - A brilliant way to practise counting numbers!

CMOTDibbler has beaten me to it: definitely have clean clothes in ziplock bags close at hand. DS always threw up (fortunately over DH) until he was 5 or so. I bought several shirts from the ferry shop on day crossings.

We have two kids aged 4 and under.

We recently travelled to Paris with them. They loved it and are still talking about it a few months later.

We've travelled as far as Australia with them.

We managed to survive our journeys by packing:

Lots of small snacks

Little bottles of water

An iPad with TV shows, movies and games on

Books

New small toys to keep them entertained

We dress them in a few layers so they can be added and removed easily as temperatures can change a lot on planes and in airports

All kids have their cranky moments when travelling

It's worth the stress and hassle of taking them on new adventures as the memories you create to look back on are priceless

If packing loads of baby food because you won't have a kitchen, make sure you test to see if they like it first!

When DC was small we found that trying to keep some semblance of a routine really helped us. For us it was bedtimes and mealtimes. It was far less stressful to get DC into bed at 'normal' time and enjoy a few hours to sit out with a plate of bread/cheese/pâté and a bottle of wine than it was to go to restaurants in the evenings with a vague hope that they might sleep in the buggy. We did nice restaurants and meals at lunchtimes instead.

Now they are older we use any time difference to our advantage. If there is a two hour difference DC can go to bed at 10pm local time and (hopefully) giving us a lie-in rather than trying to adjust everything by two hours.

Before we go, I take the children shopping to choose snacks for their backpacks to eat on the journey and put in a bottle of water each. I let them each choose a book to add and a writing pad and 'clicky pencil' We have a few things like happy families cards, charades cards and we have homemade guess the animal games.
My husband makes a playlist which we put on random and as a backup we have DVD players that attach to the back of the seat. A cuddle toy and a fluffy blanket completes the backpack.
We normally go to France on holiday and this has helped us survive several journeys to the south of France (oh and a pair of earplugs for mum and dad in case bickering gets too much 😂)

Car snacks and night driving work well for us. We often will get up v early (like 5am early!) to get started on long journeys when roads are quiet, just lift the dcs from bed in pjs and aim to stop are services around 8 for breakfast and change in to proper clothes.

Audio books are good for long journeys that have to be done in daytime.

Have a change of clothes in the car in case someone is ill/wets them self/drops a bottle of water down them.

Watching DVDs in the car seems to set off my dcs travel sickness so we avoid them now.

On a ferry with my son I told him I'd seen a shark (he was obsessed with sharks) and this kept him quiet for a hour or two just looking at the sea!

The key is not to stress about little things and just go with the flow.
Food wise I always take back up supplies and let my son choose a treat if he tries new food

have lots of activities like colouring books, puzzles and snacks

My top tip would be layered clothes and those combat style trousers that unzip at the knee and convert from trousers to shorts. They were great for our 6 year old when we arrived in / left Greece to keep DS warm on the plane and back in the UK and to keep him cool abroad particularly if you have to be out of accommodation earlier in the day than you're travelling.

For slightly older children, get them involved in the local currency and comparing coins or value with the £. 1 euro looks like £1, can you buy the same with it. Who is on their bank notes etc.

Lots of smaller thing gathered over time from charity shops and produced one at a time help on long drives / trips. For some reason old McDonald's toys seem to be great for this. They turn up cheaply in charity shops if you don't go to McDonald's and tend on be only one or two parts and very robust.

Don't tell them where you're going. It keeps a good conversation up, gets them making guesses when they see clues, stops them asking for sweets for short periods...

Mine - don't be afraid to travel with children with severe allergies. It takes a lot of extra planning and packing but it is definitely worth it.

Plenty of "clean" snacks: raisins, cheese sticks, Smarties if you allow chocolate

No-spill sippy cups

Shade for the rear passenger window(s)

Pay for the extra priority boarding/premium club on the ferry - it means one less thing to worry about. It's also a wee bit of calm in the middle of a potentially long drive (maybe more of an issue for us as we'd already driven from Glasgow)

We’ve been going to France by car and ferry since before the kids and every year since. My second child is 11 days old in her passport photo, my first is 8 weeks. It was a pleasant surprise to realise the ferry is full of families. There’s a lot of camaraderie. I’ve even been lent pencil crayons and paper by another parent when, as a rookie, I hadn’t thought to bring them.

We go to the Dordogne and to Charente-Maritime. It’s a long way and we now have our journey down to a fine art. We get an overnight ferry to make the overall journey as short as possible. I quite like all of us snugly together in a cabin. On the shorter crossings, the kids won’t get a full night’s sleep, but as they’ll probably sleep in the car the next day anyway, they’ll have less time to be awake and bored. I love being able to grab a quick shower before they wake up so I’m fresh for the long day’s journey ahead. DH goes and gets us a good coffee to start our day.

We time our mealstops around big cities. I research ahead using the internet (google.fr) and find indoor play areas where we can get a meal and the kids can have time to be active and out of a carseat without having to worry about losing them or getting sunburnt.

For our return journey home, we do an early evening sailing. This fits well with the ‘out by 10am’ rule with most gites, campsites etc and our 5 hour journey back to the boat. The boat itself is an entertainment. We spend as much time out on deck as we can.

We now like to say goodbye to France and our summer holiday from the top deck, enjoy the wind in our hair and the sun setting, then go for a blow-out meal with a really nice glug of wine. With kids, you can’t drink much, so we drink well instead. We spend the remainder of the time in the kids activity area making friends with other kids and parents. The kids fall asleep on the car journey home, so before we leave the boat we have them in PJs ready to transfer straight back into their own beds. They’re usually so shattered we get an hour’s catch up the next morning ourselves.

A tip we were given for a long flight to Australia but would work equally well in a long ferry or drive to France. It was to wrap a couple of "presents". They might even be toys that the DC has. These can be brought out and 2/3 hour intervals and just work to give a distraction. Even if only for 5-10 minutes. Every little bit helps!

If old enough, give them something to do that helps towards everyone enjoying it. From a young age, I helped in setting up camp (holding pegs, ropes etc), map reading (even where Mum knew where she was going) and even simple cooking.

A portable DVD player

it would definely be be prepared for every eventuality, stock up on books, activites books crayons, healthy snacks, portable dvd player, first aid kit, sun cream, calpol. When you know your prepared you will be much more relaxed about the holiday

Always double check your luggage to make sure you have packed everything you need its so easy to forget something.

New audio books is a tradition for us, last year we took a David Walliams collection, I've already bought a Michael Morpurgo collection for this year.
Lots of film/TV on ipad and headphones so I don't have to listen to it!
We travel when they are sleeping if possible and I also have a secret stash of distractions (make sure you have some for the journey home too)
We have done south of France and la rochelle in the past but seem to have settled on south brittany now as the compromise between better weather and distance to travel.

Take a bag of small toys that the children haven't seen before, my favourite are Melissa and Doug repositionable stickers, I spy books and lots of plain paper and coloured pencils. It will be invaluable to keep little (and big) ones amused!!

Top TIP DON'T but if you must army mentality is needed - obviously make sure you have adequate medical insurance. Then it is all about preparation - make countless lists. Clothes - try to choose items with multiple uses and that are easy to clean, depending where you are going choose clothes for every weather condition and pack creatively using scales to check you re keeping to limits if flying. Medicines - Everything especially pain relief, plastic bags in case of sickness, diarrhea medication, plasters, bandages etc. Entertainment - all the basics such as tablets, books, colouring, and a range of new items which you can wrap out and produce in times of stress. I always look up word games on the internet and keep a page of ideas. Food/drink - allow for delays, aim for items which won't go off and are not too sticky. Good Luck!