Later today, we’re off on our annual summer holiday. This year, it’s a week in North Wales, where we’ll be staying in a rented holiday cottage.
As usual, we’re going with my parents, who have kindly paid for the accommodation for all five of us. It also gives our nine-year-old chance to spend time with their paternal grandparents – as my parents live in York, they’re just a little too far to see on a regular basis.
Like last year’s holiday to Northumberland, this holiday is a domestic holiday; although Wales is a separate country from England, it’s not a separate nation state and so we don’t need to worry about having different currency, passports, plug adaptors and the like. And there’s no biosecurity restrictions, so we can bring and take back as much cheese as we’d like.
We are driving there, and it’ll be in our new electric car. Naturally, I’ve spent some time before we leave scoping out where we can charge the car whilst we’re there, but it’ll be its first distance test. A full charge should be enough to get us all the way there.
We’ve already started a list of where we’d like to go. This may well include Portmeiron, as pictured in the header image. That photo was taken the last time we were in North Wales, back in 2018. What we actually end up doing will, of course, depend on the weather.
I’ve written more than a week’s worth of blog posts in advance, so there’ll be no gap in blogging whilst I’m away.
This is the eighth, and final, blog post about what we did on our 2024 holiday to Northumberland. Previously, I wrote about Cragside, and today is about our visit to Beamish.
‘Wait a minute’, you may be thinking, ‘Beamish isn’t in Northumberland’. And you would be right – Beamish is in County Durham. But we called in on the way home and so I’m counting it as part of the holiday.
Beamish is an outdoor, living museum – very similar to the Black Country Living Museum that we visited back in May. It’s split into different areas, each representing a different time period, from the 1820s through to the 1950s. I’ve been a few times, and all three of us last visited in 2019 for my 35th birthday.
Beamish is huge, and it’s now just about impossible to see everything in one day. So, as we’d been before, we strategised and focussed on visiting a few key areas that we wanted to see.
1820s Landscape
This is the area set 200 years ago, around Pockerley Old Hall, a farmhouse and one of the few buildings that was in situ and not rebuilt on the site. Elements of the farm have been there since the 15th century. At the farm, there are a few horses and pigs to see, and a brand new tavern where we had lunch.
This area is also is home to a waggonway, which was a predecessor to the railways and has a replica of Puffing Billy to haul visitors up and down a short section of track.
1900s pit village
Jumping forward, and there’s the pit village – a small community around a coal mine, set around the peak period of coal production in the area. You can go down the Mahogany Drift Mine, which was a real mine – if you go down a closed off mine road and keep going you’ll end up about a mile away. The village shows how people lived – there’s a school, church and several miners’ cottages.
1950s town
This bit was still being built when we last visited, and is now mostly complete. In a way, this felt like the oddest bit of the museum seeing as the houses are just like those that friends used to live in. You can go into the houses, and they have been decorated as they would have been when new. There’s also a playground and a high street with a toy shop, cinema and appliances shop. You can book to have your hair done in a 1950s style, and there’s a fish and chip shop.
It’s the first time in a while that a setting in Beamish reflects a time in living memory.
1900s town
Joined onto the 1950s town is the 1900s town, one of the older sections of Beamish and probably the most well-known. It’s expanded somewhat over the years and includes many transplanted buildings, including a bank, sweet shop, pub, co-operative store and a pharmacy. It’s certainly the busiest bit of the museum and the most complete.
This was all we had time to see – the weather was starting to turn, and we had a two hour drive home ahead of us, so we missed the 1940s home farm, the 1950s farm and the fairground.
Getting around Beamish
Beamish is a large site, and unless you’re super fit, you’ll probably want to make use of the transport options provided. One of the things Beamish is known for is its tramway, which forms a circuit of the site and connects most (but not all) of the areas. At peak times, there are three trams in operation. They’re all heritage trams, although not all from the North-East of England – one is from Oorto, although painted as if it was from South Shields.
For the areas not reachable by tram – namely the 1900s Pit Village and the 1950s Town – there are a series of heritage buses running. These are all diesel, but there’s a plan to run electrically-powered trolleybuses into the 1950s town in future.
Wheelchair users can use a replica classic bus which has had a foldaway lift added at the back. It’s an on-call service reserved for those with mobility issues.
Accessibility
Accessibility at Beamish is pretty good, considering that there are lots of old buildings – you can tell that some thought has gone in to ensuring access where possible. But that doesn’t mean that every building is accessible, although the newest areas like the 1950s town are the most accessible. Indeed, the 1950s town is home to a Changing Places facility, and many of the buildings have lifts to access upper floors where needed. There’s an extensive accessibility guide on the web site.
Tickets for Beamish are valid from one year of purchase; as mentioned, it’s more than one day out and so you can visit as many times in the subsequent 364 days without paying again. At time of writing, tickets are around £28 each for adults and £17 for children. A Max Card discount is available on tickets bought on the day. However, I would recommend buying tickets in advance as we had to queue for quite a while to purchase them on arrival.
There are regular direct buses from Newcastle, Sunderland and Chester-le-Street. Chester-le-Street is also the nearest mainline railway station, served by regular Transpennine Express and occasional LNER and CrossCountry services. The bus services seemed well-used when we went, and drop you right outside the front entrance.
I’ve mentioned the Farne Islands in my previous posts about Seahouses and Bamburgh Castle. They’re a collection of 15-20 islands just off the Northumberland coast – the number of visible islands depends on the tides. People have lived on the islands in the past, but nowadays there’s no year-round human residents. They’re now looked after by the National Trust.
Whilst humans may no longer live there, plenty of birds and seals make it their home instead, and so there are plenty of boat tours from Seahouses to go and see them. We went on a two hour tour with Billy Shiels; ours was a ‘non-landing’ tour that visited several of the islands but didn’t dock at any of them. Other tours do land at one or two of the islands; if you’re a National Trust member then you can land for free but non-members have to pay a landing charge.
Bird life on the Farne Islands
Probably the biggest draw for people visiting the Farne Islands is the opportunity to see Atlantic Puffins. They’re not there all year round – indeed, when we visited a couple of weeks ago, they were grouping up to get ready to fly out to sea. They’ll stay out at sea until the spring, so we were lucky to see them. Indeed, we probably saw thousands of them – swimming, flying, eating or just lounging around on the rocks. Puffins are one of my favourite birds – I’ve seen a few at a distance at RSPB Bempton Cliffs in East Yorkshire, but I had never been this close to them before. I managed to get lots of photos of them, and it was amazing to see them flying overhead.
Besides the puffins, we saw shags, razorbills, cormorants, oyster catchers, eider ducks, terns and kittiwakes. Indeed the kittiwakes still had some quite fluffy chicks in their nests on the rocks when we visited.
Grey seals
As well as the birds, there were hundreds of grey seals. Many of the females were pregnant, so there will hopefully be lots of pups in the autumn. Whilst we saw plenty lounging around on the rocks, there were a few out swimming as well. At other times of the year, it’s possible to see thousands of seals on the islands.
The boat trips are not cheap – expect to pay around £25 per person for a two hour trip. But it was absolutely worth it – I keep using the word ‘amazing’ but I can’t think of any other words to describe what an experience it was. We got really lucky with the weather too – nice and sunny with not too much wind. It was definitely one of my top life experiences.
This is the first of a series of blog posts about what we did on our 2024 summer holiday. We stayed in Seahouses, a small village on the Northumberland coast, in a rented holiday cottage.
Seahouses is nice – much smaller than other seaside resorts like Blackpool or Scarborough and less brash. There was just the one amusement arcade, for example, which was in a relatively unassuming building away from the seafront. The main reason for Seahouses becoming a village was its harbour, which is known as the ‘North Sunderland Harbour’, as it acted as the harbour for the neighbouring village of North Sunderland. This village has nothing to do with the better-known City of Sunderland in the next county to the south.
The name ‘Seahouses’ came about from the small houses built around the harbour by the fishing community, and mainly came into use when the North Sunderland Railway opened. That’s now gone, having closed in the 1950s, and there’s a car park where the railway station used to be.
Many of these ‘sea houses’ are now holiday cottages, and if you walk down one of the streets you’ll see that most of the houses have key safes outside. I suspect that, in the winter, Seahouses gets a lot quieter than during the peak summer tourist season.
What’s there to see in Seahouses
We arrived late on the Friday night, and so we had a wander around the village on Saturday morning. As mentioned, there’s lots of holiday cottages and the harbour. There’s also plenty of gift shops, restaurants and a few pubs. At one time, there would have been many smokehouses, selling smoke fish – indeed, it’s believed that the kipper was invented in Seahouses. Nowadays, there’s just one smokehouse left: Swallow Fish.
There’s plenty of seabirds to watch. As well as the usual seagulls, we saw oyster catchers, sandpipers and a couple of grebes in the sea. There are also several eider ducks in the harbour.
Seahouses is also the main launch point for boats to the Farne Islands and Lindisfarne, which we visited later in the week (blog posts to come). There’s also a lifeboat station which is home to one of the larger lifeboats, and a tractor to haul it to the sea – plus the usual RNLI shop.
As mentioned before, Seahouses’ railway station was closed in the 1950s. The nearest railway station is at Chathill, but it only gets a token service of two trains per day towards Newcastle-upon-Tyne, and there’s no connecting bus service. The 418 and X18 run every four hours (so collectively there’s a bus around every two hours in each direction) which connect to Berwick-upon-Tweed, Alnwick, Morpeth and Newcastle. With this in mind, you’re probably going to want to drive to Seahouses, and it’s on the Northumberland Coastal Route which is a signposted route along mostly B-roads.
In terms of getting around once you’re there, obviously it’s a coastal village and so there’s a slope down to the shore. Whilst there are steps in places, you should be able to find an alternative sloped route where needed. A public changing places toilet is available in the village.
This is another pre-recorded post – I’m actually writing this a couple of weeks ahead of time – but by the time you read this, we’ll be back from our 2024 summer holiday. We went to Northumberland, and stayed in the coastal village of Seahouses.
As mentioned in my domestic holidays post, we decided to have a holiday in England as my dad has had some periods of ill health recently, and wouldn’t have managed the driving that we normally do when we go to France. But it was also an opportunity to visit somewhere that I’ve only ever passed through; I haven’t had the chance to actually see some of the places that we’ve visited before properly. Which, considering that Northumberland is only three hours away by car, is a bit of a shame.
Consent
I also didn’t want to talk about where we were going in advance. Now, whilst this blog doesn’t attract the readership that it once did, I am also conscious that what I write here is public. And so I don’t really want to state exactly where I am at any given time, just in case someone uses that information against me. Of course, you may just decide that you like me and want to meet up with me, but I’d rather you didn’t – or at least, you contact me first and get my consent.
And it’s with consent in mind that covers my other reason for being vague about where I’m going. When it comes to my holidays, it isn’t just me going but my parents, my wife and our eight-year-old. And it’s our eight-year-old in particular whose identity I want to protect. I avoid using their actual name or gender on here, because they are too young to give informed consent for this to be public information. I don’t think they’re old enough to have a conversation about what a blog is, or that any information that I put up about them is public and likely to be available forever. Because even if I delete old posts (and a lot are missing), they may live on in places like the Web Archive.
Our eight-year-old watches lots of videos on YouTube Kids now (which is part of the reason for us cancelling Disney+), and many of these feature young kids. Now, obviously their parents are more comfortable with this, but it makes me cringe. It’s worth reading this Teen Vogue article about kids of influencers. I want my child to enjoy their time as a child, and I don’t want to have a difficult conversation when they’re older about all the things that I’ve shared about them in public.
Anyway, back to the holiday
Okay, so this blog post didn’t quite go the way I expected it to. Once I’ve had time to download and edit the photos that I’ve taken, I’ll be posting a series of blog posts about the things that we did whilst we were away.
I’m away on holiday at the moment, so this week’s posts are about previous un-blogged holidays from 2019, 2021, 2022 and 2023. Yesterday was our 2021 holiday to Kent and East Sussex, and today it’s our 2022 holiday to Brittany.
By the summer of 2022, almost all Covid restrictions were gone and so we ventured outside of England for the first time in three years. We returned to our usual holiday format of a couple of weeks in France, staying in a Eurocamp static caravan, and this time, we went to Brittany in Northern France.
I’ve been to Brittany a few times, but it was the first time for our then six-year-old and my wife Christine. We stayed near Carnac on the Atlantic coast, which is well-known for the Carnac Stones – around 3000 standing stones across the area.
Here’s where we visited:
St Malo
The easiest way to get to Brittany from England is by ferry, and so we took the overnight Portsmouth-St Malo ferry with Brittany Ferries. As (for once) we didn’t have a long drive on arrival in France, we spent the first morning in St Malo, having a wander around the town and harbour. The town is fortified, and inside the town walls there’s a Micro Zoo, with lots of small animals. It’s a nice little place, if not especially interesting, and was enough to pass the morning before heading onwards to Carnac.
Pont Aven
Pont Aven is a scenic little town in Brittany that’s home to lots of artist studios. We took advantage of the all day kid’s club at the campsite to have a grown-ups only day here. It’s a nice place to wander around – it’s in a steep-sided valley with a river running through it.
Parc de Branféré
We always seem to end up at a zoo on our holidays, and this year it was Parc de Branféré. Make sure you stick around for the bird show, as they bring out all of the hand-reared birds pretty much all at once. It was fantastic being able to get so close to the animals – many are not locked away in enclosures, but free to roam around. It’s definitely one of my top five zoos that I’ve visited.
Insectarium de Lizio
Another zoo of sorts, but this time focussed mostly on insects. As well as many preserved examples in frames, there were a number of live insects here, as well as a bee colony and an outdoor butterfly garden. It was certainly enough to fill a morning, even if it’s not a very big place. And you probably need to like insects to really enjoy it.
Museum of the Junkyard Poet
Also in Lizio (which in reality is a rather small village) is the Museum of the Junkyard Poet, which we found whilst browsing TripAdvisor. It’s a fabulously whimsical place in the Brittany countryside, with buildings and contraptions made out of discarded materials. It’s very, very French, but fun to explore with lots of hidden things. Oh, and there were loads of frogs all over the place.
Quiberon
Quiberon is a town on the end of a peninsula that pokes out into the Atlantic Ocean. It’s a port for ferries to a few islands in Quiberon Bay, the largest being Belle-Île-en-Mer (which literally translates as, um, ‘pretty island in the sea’). There’s nice sandy beaches and it’s a seaside resort, sort-of like Blackpool but sunnier and French.
I’m away on holiday at the moment, so this week’s posts are about previous un-blogged holidays from 2019, 2021, 2022 and 2023. Yesterday was our 2022 holiday to Brittany, and today it’s our 2023 holiday to the Loire Valley in France.
Though I did go into some detail about our 2023 holiday in my 2023 review, here’s a bit more about what we did and where we went. Our holiday followed its usual format – an overnight ferry from Portsmouth to St Malo, and then we drove down to stay in a static caravan at a campsite. This year we stayed near St Catherine de Fierbois, to the south of the Loire valley and between Tours and Poitiers.
Here’s what we got up to:
Parc des Mini-Châteaux
One thing the Loire Valley is known for are its many castles, or ‘châteaux’ in French. We limited ourselves to three this year, but we got to see miniature models of almost all of them at the Parc des Mini Châteaux. Here, there are models of Chambord, Chenonceau and many others that we had previously been to in person. It’s a fun way of seeing lots of places without having to travel to them all in person, and probably better for kids too.
Château du Clos Lucé
The first real château that we visited was Château du Clos Lucé, in which Leonardo da Vinci spent some time. Consequently it’s a museum containing recreations of some of his inventions, and a print of that painting. What we enjoyed more were the gardens, which also contained several of da Vinci’s inventions, but on a much larger scale. Some, like an Archimedes screw, were interactive, and exploring the gardens was fun.
Zooparc de Beauval
Zooparc Beauval is probably my favourite zoo that I’ve ever been to. We went there for the first time in 2018, and made a return visit last year. Since then, it’s expanded, and as was already too much to see in one day before, we focussed on the new bits and then our favourite bits from last time.
Its star attraction is probably the giant pandas, and we were lucky enough to see them. Unlike those that went to Edinburgh Zoo, those at Beauval have had more success at breeding and so there were four pandas there when we went. There had been a cub that we saw in 2018, but I believe it’s moved elsewhere to carry on the breeding programme.
The other thing that you should make time to see is Les Maitres des Airs, which is a fantastic daily bird flying show. Though there were fewer birds taking part compared to 2018, it’s still a great spectacle. Get there early to get a good view.
Other animals that I haven’t seen much elsewhere include hippos, dugongs and white tigers.
Grand Aquarium de Touraine
We bought a joint ticket for both the Grand Aquarium de Touraine and the Parc des Mini-Châteaux, so when a wet day rolled around we had something to do. It’s interesting enough to spend half a day at; a particular highlight for our (then) seven-year-old was being able to draw a fish and have it scanned by a camera, to then appear in a virtual aquarium on a projector screen with others creations.
Château d’Ussé
The second Loire château that we visited was Château d’Ussé, which allegedly was the inspiration for the story of Sleeping Beauty. This is something that the owners have capitalised on, and so as well as being able to go inside some of the interior of the château, there’s also a walk around the top floor where the rooms have been decorated to tell the story. There’s also some nice gardens to walk around, but part of the building is off limits as its owners still live there.
Château du Riveau
One château that wasn’t at the Parc des Mini-Châteaux was Château du Riveau, as it hasn’t been open to the public for very long. Again, its owners live here and so only a few rooms inside are open.
The gardens are really good – and we got a discount for being RHS members. There’s lots of sculptures, and a few pet birds around, and it’s very whimsically French. The whimsy continues inside – there’s lots of taxidermy on the walls wearing glasses or mounted backwards. We really enjoyed our visit here and it stands out compared to the other châteaux of the Loire. You can see the rest of my photos on Flickr.
Futuroscope
Futuroscope is a theme park based around film. It opened in the 1980s, and I went twice with my parents in the 1990s. This time I introduced it to my wife and our (then) seven-year-old, and it was a lot of fun.
Each of the pavilions is a different kind of cinema. Some have massive Imax screens, others are in 3D or the seats move with the film. In some, you may find yourself sprayed with water or blasted with air. The architecture is also futuristic, in a way that (for the most part) still feels modern even after over 30 years.
And yes, it’s very French. The food is much better than your average British theme park, and there’s some really whimsical evening entertainment. We would have liked to have stayed around for the evening sound and light show, but being July it was quite late at night. Again, there’s more photos on Flickr since I actually got around to uploading them.
I’m away on holiday at the moment, so this week’s posts are about previous un-blogged holidays from 2019, 2021, 2022 and 2023. Yesterday was our 2019 holiday to the Dordogne in France, and today, it’s our 2021 holiday to Kent and East Sussex.
In 2021, with some remaining Covid restrictions making travel a little difficult, we decided to have a domestic holiday and remain in England. We decided to stay on the south coast, at Parkdean’s Camber Sands resort in East Sussex. This wasn’t our first stay at a Parkdean resort – Sci-Fi Weekender is at Parkdean’s Vauxhall Holiday Park in Great Yarmouth – although it was the first time that my parents had stayed at such a place. My parents found it rather different to the Eurocamp sites that they’re used to in France – the static caravans are more tightly packed in and usually don’t have decking outside. But it was fine as a base to explore the area.
Here’s where we visited:
Hever Castle
On the way down, we called in at Hever Castle, which is probably best known as being the childhood home of Anne Boleyn, the second wife of King Henry VIII and mother of Queen Elizabeth I. The castle itself isn’t that big, and we actually didn’t have time to go in to it properly, but there’s plenty to see and do in the grounds. There’s some really nice gardens, and regular jousting events at weekends, which are fun to watch. Our eight-year-old (who was five at the time) particularly liked the water maze, and there are several playgrounds too, so it’s a great place to take kids.
Unlike the other castles mentioned here later, this isn’t run by the National Trust. However, it’s possible to get discounted entry with Tesco Clubcard vouchers, Gardener’s World two-for-one cards, or membership of the RHS or Historic Houses.
The Romney, Hythe & Dymchurch Railway
Along the Kent coast is 13 ½ mile miniature railway – the Romney, Hythe & Dymchurch Railway. All the locomotives are ⅓ of the size of regular mainline trains, and it runs from Hythe in the east to Dungeness in the west. We travelled the whole line. At Dungeness, there’s a small café and a visitor centre, and you should have time for a stroll around the village of Dungeness between trains. It’s quiet scenic apart from the massive nuclear power station.
Howletts Wild Animal Park
We used more of our Tesco Clubcard vouchers at Howletts Wild Animal Park. It’s a zoo, but doesn’t call itself one; the focus is on breeding endangered animals and allowing them large habitats to live in. Consequently it’s quite a large site, with several big cat species, elephants and gorillas. It’s one of two animal sanctuaries in Kent run by the Aspinall Foundation, whose founder, John Aspinall, had some odd ideas about animal husbandry which has seen at least two keepers die over the years. Because the focus is on animal welfare rather than visitor experience, don’t be surprised if not every animal is available to see. We saw just about everything apart from the pallas cats.
Rye
The nearest town to Camber Sands is Rye, which is situated on a natural hill and has a castle at the top. It’s a pretty little town, with narrow cobblestone streets and a harbour. There’s plenty of tourist-orientated shops, and the castle is open as a museum, with good views from the top.
Bodiam Castle
My mum sold this to us as a ‘proper castle’. It has a real moat, and bridge to cross it, to enter the keep. On the inside it’s mostly open to the elements, but when we went there were plenty of activities for kids. This is a National Trust property.
Scotney Castle
We had a two castle day that day, and followed up our visit to Bodiam Castle with a trip to Scotney Castle in the afternoon. You may recognise it as a filming location for the Sandman series that was on Netflix a couple of years ago. It’s also a National Trust property – between our National Trust membership and Tesco Clubcard vouchers, we had a good value holiday.
The old part of the castle is mostly ruins, but there’s also a newer castle which we didn’t go into. There’s also plenty of grounds and a playground for the kids.
Hastings
Our run of nice weather petered out and so we had a wet day in the town of Hastings. Here, we visited the aquarium, the Fishermen’s Museum and the Shipwreck Museum in the Rock-a-Nore, and had a wander around the harbour and lifeboat station.
On the way home
Outside of Kent and East Sussex, we stopped over in Slough and spent an afternoon in Windsor, following by a day at Legoland Windsor, before heading home. Our eight-year-old is desperate for a return visit to Legoland.
I’m away on holiday at the moment, so this week’s posts are about previous un-blogged holidays from 2019, 2021, 2022 and 2023. Today, it’s our 2019 holiday to the Dordogne in France.
For our 2019 summer holiday in France, we went quite a bit further south, to the Dordogne region (named after the river that runs through it). As well as the overnight ferry from Portsmouth to St Malo, we stopped off at a hotel in Poitiers and so it took the equivalent of three full days of driving to reach our campsite near Bergerac. We took our own car, but we had to abandon it after (what I presume) was a failed wheel bearing saw me skid off the road into a ditch, so the second half of the holiday was in an a hire car.
As this holiday was five years ago, in June 2019, my memories are not the best, which is why there’s not a lot of detail here. It’s thanks to checkins on Swarm and my own photos that I can recall what we did.
Here’s where we visited:
Beynac-et-Cazenac
Benyac overlooks the Dordogne river where it cuts through a deep gorge, and the village is built into the side of the steep valley. It’s a pretty little place with narrow, twisting streets and craft shops.
Château de Castelnaud
Castelnaud is quite a good castle. It sits high up, in a commanding position over the surrounding valleys, and the courtyard is full of catapults, trebuchets and over siege engines that might have been used during the various wars that it has experienced over the centuries. I remember that we treated our (then) three-year-old to a wooden sword and shield from the gift shop.
Gouffre de Proumeyssac
Known as the ‘crystal cathedral’, Gouffre de Proumeyssac is a huge underground cave full of stalagmites and stalactites. Clever use of lighting makes it a fascinating experience. Whilst nowadays there’s a wheelchair-accessible main entrance, you can also opt to be lowered into the cave in a basket, as the original explorers would have done at the beginning of the last century.
Le Bournat
Le Bournat is an open-air living museum – a bit like Beamish or the Black Country Living Museum. The aim is to recreate how people lived in the Dordogne region in the past, with farms and small industry to look at. Whilst I would argue that it’s not as realistic as its British counterparts, it’s very pretty and makes for a nice day out. Like many of the places we went to in 2019, I seem to remember visiting when I was much younger and it seems to have expanded significantly since then.
Eymet
Eymet (pronounced ‘ay-may’) is an example of a Bastide, or fortified town. This means that there are walls around the town centre, and buildings such as the church are fortified. There’s also quite a large British diaspora here, with British ex-pats making up around a quarter of the population. Like many small French towns, its communal wash house has been preserved.
Château des Milandes
Our second château of the holiday was the Château des Milandes. It was home to the American singer Josephine Baker, and so it has a number of her more famous (and infamous) outfits and tells her story. There are some nice gardens outside, along with an aviary which is home to a number of birds of prey. If you time your visit right, then you can watch a bird of prey show. I visited here with my parents when I was younger and had the interesting experience of having a harris hawk land on my head, which my dad took a photo of.
Aquarium du Perigord Noir
We usually end up at an aquarium whilst on holiday, as it’s a way to spend a wet day, and so we went to the Aquarium du Perigord Noir. Besides the many fish – mostly freshwater, as it’s a long way inland – they are a breeding centre for caimans, and have some coypu (also known as Nutria or Chilean beavers).
On the way back, we stopped off at a hotel in Le Mans, and also at Warwick Castle once back in England.
This year, we’ll be taking a ‘domestic holiday‘ – in other words, our main summer holiday will not involve overseas travel.
Normally, we go on a driving holiday to France, where we take our own car with us. However, my dad has had some periods of ill health over the past 12 months, including two long hospital stays. And whilst he is much better now, we didn’t want to risk booking such a holiday without knowing that he would be able to manage the many hours of driving that this will entail.
Instead, we’re staying in England for our holiday. This isn’t the first time – we also had a holiday in England in 2021, when there were still significant Covid-related travel restrictions. That time, we spent a week on the south coast in Kent and East Sussex, and had a lovely time. This year, we’re going further north instead.
Not a ‘staycation’
In 2021, many people had their holidays in the UK, and some referred to these as a ‘staycation‘ as they were ‘staying’ in their own country. I refuse to use this term in this instance, preferring ‘domestic holiday’, as not everyone can afford to go abroad for their holidays. A ‘staycation’ is when you have a holiday but stay at your own home.
Less need for insurance
Because we’re not travelling so far, we don’t really need travel insurance. Sure, you can buy travel insurance for a domestic holiday, in case you need to cancel non-refundable travel or accommodation. But it’s not needed to cover potential medical issues, as we’ll be able to use the NHS like normal. I also don’t need to purchase extra car breakdown cover.
There are other expenses you can avoid too. You don’t need to pay for mobile phone roaming (or have to buy a roaming eSIM). You don’t need to exchange foreign currency in advance, or worry how much currency you have left during the holiday.
Travel and food
There’s also less travel time; we should be able to get to our accommodation in about three hours of driving. When we go to France, travel usually takes up the first 2-3 days of the holiday, and at least two coming back again. Instead, it’ll just be a couple of afternoons. So although we’re away for fewer nights, the actual length of the holiday is broadly equivalent to previous years.
We can also take our own food with us. Pre-Brexit, we could do this when we went to France, but now there are strict limits of what food you can bring in to the EU, even for personal use. That also means we can save money by stocking up before we go.
Whilst I like travel and want to see more of the world, it’s also quite nice to have a holiday with less admin. Which, seeing as my job involves admin on a day to day basis, it’s nice to have break. And surely that’s what a holiday is all about?
