Mumsnet users share their best and worst travel stories with Arla BIG Milk

[JustineBMumsnet]

This sponsored discussion is now closed.

Whether you’re going on a day out or on holiday, the journeys to your destination and back can make or break the entire trip. They help to determine if you have memories of a BIG adventure or a disappointing day. Arla would like to hear about your best and worst travel stories.

Here’s what Arla Big Milk has to say: “We know how important it is to get your little explorers out in the world around them, so we’ve partnered with Magic Light to bring you yearlong BIG Adventures. We’re also running an on pack monthly prize draw, available across UK grocery retailers, to give you the chance to win an amazing trip to Chessington World of Adventures Resort. Helping to fuel these BIG Adventures, Arla Big Milk is simply fresh whole milk that’s enriched with essential nutrients. So, if you want to join in on the adventure, come visit our site to explore activities for your Easter holidays.”

Do you have any travel stories that were memorable for all the wrong reasons? Perhaps you’ve experienced the misfortune of a child vomiting all over the back seats of the car or all over you following too many sweets? Perhaps you checked into your hotel and found that you’d got the date wrong? Have you had to fill time after your flight was delayed playing a dreaded game of eye-spy for hours on end?

Or, maybe you’ve been lucky in your travels and you managed to sleep throughout an entire journey, arriving bright eyed and bushy tailed at your destination? Perhaps you remember a journey where your children gave up bickering and actually liked each other for once? Perhaps you’ve been unexpectedly upgraded to first class or premium service and lapped up the free luxury?

Share either your best or your worst travel story on the thread below to be entered into a prize draw where one MNer will win a £300 voucher for the store of their choice (from a list).

Thanks and good luck!

MNHQ

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My best friend had just purchased her first ever car, BRAND NEW! She was so excited and she wanted me to be a part of her first journey. My son aged 2 had stated that his belly felt bad but he also wanted to go in aunties (as he called her) new car. Off we went blasting the good tunes, looking hip, living our best life and feeling proud. Once back home my friend parked up and I took the seat belt of my son, only to have him vomit all over the backseats!!!! Not a little polite vomit but a full belly emptying effort!!! That new car smell that we had spent a good hour enjoying was gone forever! 🚗😷

Flat tyre on a late evening 5 minutes from leaving a campsite the furthest we’ve ever been from home. 5 hours and 3 journeys later we ended up in a hotel 5 minutes from where we’d started when we’d had to fight for and then been promised a trip home! Long night!

Dc2 gets very car sick, and all journeys until she went forward facing involved vomit after 30 minutes in the car. The trip to Manchester from Kent where we had to stop at services to change her 3 times just on the M25 was fun....

She's better now, but we've adapted, flying is no problem so we tend to avoid holidays that mean long drives or transfers at the other end of trips.

My dad's car broke down on the way back from holiday a couple of years ago and I we had to keep an 7 year old entertained for 7 hours whilst a new exhaust system was fitted!

Our best have been en route to the Scottish highlands, we stop every half hour for snacks/playtime. We have found so many nice places, a lovely fruit farm near Perth, a weird cafe on a loch with ducks to feed, a nice restaurant with kids play bit, the house of Bruar. It’s one of my favourite bits of the holiday.

endless car sickness from London to remotest Wales....(me - not the 2 children - they were just whiney) and a nasty minor crash on the way. Hate it. Mind you, the return from same was worse - for some inexplicable reason a skinhead headbutted the window of our uninsured rental car 100 yards from home. Ouch for him and us.

My best and worst memory of a trip was when my dear best friend was still alive 13 years ago. We were heading down to Brighton to check out the Gay Pride extravaganza so set off early to make the 2 hour journey. Literally within 20 minutes of being on the motorway, the traffic had ground to a halt. Unbeknownst to us there had been a lorry fire in the early hours and the motorway was closed but there was a good 10 miles of stationary traffic. We were there for 5 hours. The weather was 90 degrees. But we had each other's company and some decent cassette tapes to sing along to. I can't imagine being trapped on a journey with a better, more entertaining person! We did eventually make it to Brighton and had a fabulous time.

Eldest child is anaphylactic to milk protein. Youngest is anaphylactic to peanuts.

We went to Hong Kong. I thought it would be a breeze with the milk allergic child - Chinese food thus not much dairy compared to, say, British food. I thought it would be a nightmare with the peanut allergic child cause Chinese food thus peanut oil used liberally.

Well we didn't know they added some sort of dairy derivative to miso soup, normally dairy free. Within 30 minutes eldest son had an asthma attack and facial swelling. When the Ventolin inhaler failed to help him breathe, we used the adrenaline auto injector. Thankfully, this worked and he could breathe. We called an ambulance, they gave him another adrenaline shot, steroids via an IV drip and more Piriton. After 2 nights in a hospital we were able to continue with our holiday!

I doubt this story will be published given that it's for a milk related company

Driving back.from Wales - 2 DC in the back. All fine until the youngest was sick on the eldest. The resulting screaming from both plus smell.of sick all the way home was not fun!

A long car journey (10 hours) with a 10 month old DS. We had his nursery rhyme CD on repeat - even when he fell asleep, if we dared to try putting the radio on, somehow he woke up and cried. I spent most of the journey feeding him bread sticks or small cubes of cheese to stop him crying. We made what felt like a billion stops to check his nappy, give him a hug, a quick walk around - and still he cried. We then had a lovely 2 week holiday but I was dreading the return journey the whole time we were there. Surprisingly, the return journey was uneventful!

Both my DC are travel sick, and as we are based in the Midlands and have family in Kent and N Yorkshire, every time we visit ANY family, we have a full on vomit fest. I usually sit in the back with them to hold the sick bowls and wipe up. My life is so glamorous!!

Worst was being stranded in an airport for 9 hours with a 4 year old and 1 year old by myself after our flight was cancelled. It was a very small airport so there weren't even any planes to watch as not many flights. Followed by a 90 minute taxi journey with no car seat for either child.

Oh God, the vomiting years when my daughter was a toddler were awful. Long journeys to Wales or North Devon when we went through so many changes of clothes.
The best was flying to the Isle of Man with a baby and a toddler for an utterly brilliant week one February.

best trip was across Europe.we were my dads sister and our cousins and we had rental cars. so we would set off with our little written out planners and us kids would read out the direction to mum and dad.when bored we slept on eacohter with our pillows in the back.and then watched a few movies on dads pc.
we competed with our cousins car to get to each moment in the desitination tick off.it was so much fun.the sunshine.the air.the feel of it was lovely.
the funnies part was how old these cars were.(I prob shouldn't say the name!) and on one stop we were swapping music for the journey and my sister chucked the caseate(yes these cars had casettes) and it just literally tapped their window.and the thing just shattered to the floor! we were all dying with laughter.
having to find a garage in the middle of a foreign country was anadventure.

We had to make a stop off in a small town to use the loo. My youngest was just that bit too desperate to make it to the toilet and ended up soaking himself and the cafe toilet. I swabbed the floor down for ages and apologised to staff. The best bit was that the only spare clothes I had on me for my child to change into were adult size Hogwarts robes (long story LOL). So we ended up walking back to the car with my son naked from the waist down with a Harry Potter outfit flapping on the floor. What a day

Worst was a car journey to pembroke. Dc were 3 and 1. We set off after dinner hoping dc would sleep en route... I get terrible travel sickness and made the mistake of looking at the sat nav to programme it. That combined with the dark and windy welsh roads set me off.

I proceeded to keep being sick... After the first few times, dc started to wake up. 'What's mummy doing?' - as i retched by the side of the road. So dp said we shouldn't keep stopping and I'd have to be sick out the window. But then the rain started, and both rain and vomit started to spray in on dc1 in the back. I pleaded with dp to just stop and let us all sleep in the car for the night. But he was starting with a migraine so wanted to get there asap before his vision went, and I was too weak and sickly to take over driving. He was driving so he won the argument... So then no stopping, windows up, me weakly puking into a picnic blanket as i had no bag. 5 horrendous hours later we got to our cottage about 2am and I had to crawl into bed and bf dc2 to sleep, sick crusted in my hair.

I had the last laugh though- the next morning dp had to scrape dried up vomit off the entire side of his car and clean up all the flecks off dcs car seat

At the start of a 4 hour drive to our holiday destination my daughter was sick in the car, and continued until we arrived. It took over an hour extra to arrive

Worse disaster was when we went away when DS was a couple of months old. Long and stressful car journey and when we arrived the key code for the cottage didn't work. We had to wait a couple of hours for someone to arrive as we were very rural only for them to not know the code either so had to wait another couple of hours to gain access to another nearby cottage which wasn't as nice and was freezing cold.

When on a plane, the pressure built up in ds's water bottle. Once opened, it squirted an enormous water fountain up, over and missing us, landing on the poor, unsuspecting man asleep in the row behind! 😳

We went to France several years again, when LO was 18 months. We planned meticulously & had a packed rucksack with snacks & activities to keep him entertained during the (admittedly relatively short!) flight. The flight there was a dream, no issues at all.
We had a lovely holiday & I was brimming with confidence about the flight home - it had fallen into time perfectly with his nap so I was looking forward to a peaceful journey.
However, sadly this was not to be as the flight was delayed by 2.5 hours. His nap time came & went & showed no signs of nodding off despite my best efforts! We managed to keep him entertained/happy until we got on the plane - by which time he was enraged & massively overtired - he screamed for the ENTIRE journey home.. a short flight.. but it felt like days with him screaming in my ear, peppered with tuts from other passengers & sympathetic 'aw..' sounds from the nicer ones!!
Haven't taken him on a plane since.. plenty of nice places to go in the UK :)

Ds3 who is never car sick, vomited all the way home from Somerset to Manchester, on the only holiday that DH couldn't come on. We stopped the car a lot that day. 🤮

Worst was a ferry to the Isle of Man I was so sea sick it was awful

Travelling by bus in Bulgaria wasn’t much fun. Most of the passengers (and the driver) smoked and one of us had to stand for a 2 hour journey

Returning from a family holiday in Ibiza! Both of us were really ill because of the hotel restaurant. Journey was horrendous!First time I’d been away with my little girl & been scared. We’ve not been abroad since