VW camper summer holidays

How to survive long car journeys with kids

As the summer gets into full swing some of us will be embarking on a long car journey with kids. It’s the down side of going on holiday in the UK but here are some tips we do to survive

Try and travel when you kids would be sleeping. We always go with nap time for Grace (aged 2) but inevitable Joe (aged 5) does have a little nap, which means a later bedtime for him.

Create a playlist that has a happy medium of music you like and your kids like. Test it out at home first so you have mixture of songs that everyone can listen to and enjoy, there will be a few shocking choices from the kids but I find I can tolerate the odd awful song when its sandwiched between songs of your choice.

Play Classic FM loud this seems to calm everyone down and sends kids into a trance.

Don’t mention the word sick, ever since we had the most horrific sick car journey ( I won’t forget that lay by just after Stonehenge as it will always bring back the memory of a full costume change for Grace whilst Joe just napped through it) with Grace every time we mention the word sick she makes herself sick??????? So sick is a banned word in our car.

Try and get as far as you can before stopping for a break, if you are desperate for a coffee you could use one of the new drive thru Costa coffee at the services (Clackett Lane)

Snacks, snacks, snacks and more snacks. Select your snacks carefully on mess levels, smell levels and accessibility levels. I find pom bears, naked bars, fruit pouches, rice cakes and more pom bears work well.

Games, we love a game. Eye spy is a classic, spot the purple car (pick a rare colour then the game lasts longer) and counting together for example Joe says 1, Grace says 2 and so on, obviously Grace can’t count that high so I join in too. Another good one is saying different colours it can get down to duck egg blue, elephant whisper as paint chart colours count too.

If you are going on a long journey try and section up the time, for example when it is nap time have all the pillows and covers out then packed away when its awake time.

Accept there will be whinging and of course the classic “Are we there yet?”

I’m sure there are loads more tips out there for long car journeys, what are yours?




Leave a Reply


WordPress.com Logo


Google photo


Twitter picture


Facebook photo


Connecting to %s