In association with Attraction Tickets Direct

A few weeks ago on social media I teased you with a picture and news of an upcoming trip with Attraction Tickets Direct.

Somewhere abroad, where I would need sunglasses and would possibly be required to dress up as a giraffe?

If you saw any of my tweets or Instagram posts the following week you will have seen that Belle and I were actually in Orlando, riding rollercoasters, visiting penguins in the coolest place in the whole of Florida, (quite literally, which was a welcome relief from the sweating), and hand feeding giraffes.

Aha!

So THAT was the clue. No dressing up required. View Post

Camp Bestival was a bit of an odd one for me this year.

It’s been one of our favourite festivals since we went the very first year it opened and it was pretty much contained in two fields, but this year was the first time we’ve been where Belle has been old enough to hang out on her own. We took her friend Ella with us and basically I got to see them first thing in the morning and last thing at night, and the rest of the time I was forbidden for looking like I knew them outside the tent.

We kept in touch by phone and at intervals during the day I was allowed to meet up with them briefly to do things like bring them jumpers, but the rest of the time I was on my own. I did have ‘go to a festival on my own’ on my list of 40 things I wanted to do before I was 40, but given the amount of time I spent at Camp Bestival trying not to cry when I looked at babies, it’s probably not something I’d be in a rush to repeat.

That said, I did have a good time overall. It was nice being able to do things like have a gong bath without someone complaining about being bored, and I was grateful for not having to watch Mr Tumble. I got to listen to quite a few talks in the literary tent, which I wouldn’t be allowed near with Belle in tow, and it was there that I watched Rick Astley doing some impromptu karaoke.

I also spotted Mary Berry eating some chops.

I know Belle and Ella had a brilliant time too, even though they DID watch Mr Tumble. Fortunately all of the acts they really wanted to see were on the Saturday evening, so it didn’t even matter that Sunday was cancelled due to the bad weather. They were proper fans, standing at the barrier of the main stage from about 5pm through until the end – around 11pm. By this point I think their bladders were teetering on the brink and Ella was shivering quite hard, but they stuck it out.

I on the other hand made myself a little camp on a blanket slightly further back, alone with my thoughts and a plastic bottle of wine. It was pretty classy.

Declan McKenna was really the guy that Belle went to see, and he was really very good live indeed. Clean Bandit were ace too and I really enjoyed Dodie, although she made me feel old as I kept getting muddled up and referring to her in my head as Dido who, according to Wikipedia, is now 46 and had her debut album in the previous century. God.

I even surprised myself by enjoying Max and Harvey, who are probably a little young for my musical tastes, but this is what happens when you let your 15 year old be in charge of in car music choices. They were such sweethearts – full of positive energy and enthusiasm. The highlight there though may have been Belle’s face a couple of days ago when I showed her that they had followed me on Twitter.

You see Belle? You see how COOL I AM??

Camp Bestival may have been a slightly different experience for me this year but I still rate it massively as a family festival. If you’ve never been to a festival before and want to try something kid friendly then Camp Bestival would be a great place to start.

View Post

Have you been on a flight lately with one of the budget airlines? They’ve started doing this thing where they insist that you put your specially purchased cabin bag sized suitcase into the hold, meaning despite having made every effort to pack light, you still have to wait for your luggage to come out on the belt, thus negating the ENTIRE POINT OF THE WHOLE THING.

It really annoys me because I pride myself on travelling light and don’t want to add an extra twenty minutes to my journey thank you very much. If I’m going to have to wait like a pleb for my suitcase then I also miss out on all the smugness of being able to walk briskly past all the people who apparently can’t go away for a few days without taking six different pairs of shoes and a hairdryer.

Fortunately I have discovered a solution in the form of the Ruitertassen traveler cabin bag

It’s beautiful isn’t it? And the SMELL. Honestly, I could just shove my face in it like it was a fluffy cat tummy and take big whiffs. (Everyone likes the smell of leather right? That’s not just me being weird?)

The leather is soft but strong, pliable and warm. It’s bliss.

The big selling point though is that although you can fit an awful lot inside thanks to the concertina thing it has going on, it LOOKS like an ordinary bag. View Post

In association with Aviva

At 15 years old, Belle is much easier to keep entertained on road trips than she used to be.

When she was little, she did NOT like cars. I’d read all these articles with top tips to get your baby to sleep – ‘take them for a drive in the car!’ – they’d say – ‘they’ll love watching the world go by!’

Nope.

Belle was not ‘lulled by the gentle driving motion’ and she really did not enjoy ‘looking out of the window at passing scenery.’ In fact she screamed constantly unless you sang Agadoo by Black Lace over and over again in a loud voice.

She looks like butter wouldn’t melt doesn’t she? Casually sat up on the kitchen counter, playing her favourite game of ‘put things in the toaster’, but don’t be fooled. She’d scream in your face soon as look at you. (Please note toaster is switched off.) View Post

A few weeks ago I went to spend a couple of nights in Boulogne-sur-Mer. It’s not a part of France I’ve ever visited – to be honest I had always seen it as one of those places that you sort of passed through on the way to somewhere more interesting.

Well, that’s exactly the sort of perception that Boulogne is trying to challenge. Hence my visit.

First things first, Boulogne has a lot going for it in terms of accessibility. We went by Eurostar and the trip from St Pancras to Calais only takes an hour. It’s then only about a half hour drive to Boulogne so extremely doable for a weekend away or even a day trip if you live a reasonable distance from London.

It also has some decent places to stay. We spent one night at the Opal Hotel on the seafront, which has lovely sea views, and another night at the Metropole in the centre. The Metropole has recently been completely refurbished and the room we stayed in was gorgeous. (Don’t be put off by the front of the building – it’s lush inside!)

So what is there to do in Boulogne to keep you busy on a mini-break? Here are some of my recommendations for things to do in Boulogne:

Check out NAUSICAA

This is an absolute must. If you go to Boulogne and don’t go to see the biggest aquarium in Europe then quite frankly you should be ashamed of yourself.

We visited NAUSICAA and I wrote all about it here.

View Post

At the end of April, just before my 40th birthday, I went to Lisbon.

Pena Palace had been on my list of ’40 things to do before 40′ for nearly five years and it was the last item I managed to squeeze in before the big day. (I did do pretty much all of them in the end, or some became less important to me at least. You can see the full list here.)

Pena Palace was as colourful as it was in the pictures I was travelling alone, I stayed in an AirBnB with pretty shutters, I ate a custard tart* and rode the trams. It was all good. I was going to write a whole post about it but to be honest I just had such a lovely time wandering around that I don’t want to.

(*Three custard tarts.)

I’ll drop in a few pictures, that’ll do.

I had dates with a couple of different people in the run up to the trip and when I told them about going to Lisbon the first question they both asked was ‘who are you going with?’

‘No one,’ I told them, ‘I’m going on my own.’

Both men had a similar look of pity in their eyes.

‘Aw, that’s a shame,’ said one.

‘No it isn’t,’ I said. ‘I want to go on my own, I like travelling alone.’ View Post

This was a review trip. All opinions my own.

You know I love a mini break.

They’re slightly more complicated now we have the kitties, as I have to arrange for someone to be in charge of meaty chunks, (theirs), and then deal with the separation anxiety, (mine), but I have about 1,329 pictures of them on my phone, so I do my best to be brave.

*sigh*

I was really looking forward to our weekend at Oakdown in Devon though, as knew it was a couple of weeks into GCSE exams and that I was definitely going to need to lie in a deckchair drinking cider out of a camping mug for a while. And yes, Belle is stressed too, but this is MY blog, so I get to complain about ME.

One of the things I’ve found about parenting is that there is a definite trade off as they grow up between responsibility and control. When they are small you long for the days when they are able to take themselves to the toilet and you’re not required to watch a dance every ten minutes, because you imagine that this passing on of responsibility will take the pressure off you.

It does not. View Post

Post in association with Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park

When Belle was small it was relatively simple to come up with things she would enjoy doing. They weren’t always things that I wanted to do, but soft play isn’t THAT bad if you take a book and pretend you can’t hear any of the shouts of ‘Mummy! Watch me on the slide! Watch me! Mummy!’

(They give up after a bit if you don’t respond.)

Nowadays though it’s trickier to come up with something that isn’t met with a groan or an eye roll, unless it’s ‘shall we go to Bristol and buy you bubble tea and spend ludicrous amounts of money in a ‘vintage’ store on stuff that looks like something Gran threw away in 1983?’

IMAGINE MY DELIGHT then, when Belle agreed on an outing to Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park. Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park was created as a legacy of the 2012 London Olympics and sport, in many forms, from basketball to cycling, is still the main pull.

We were keen to visit though to ride the slide at ArcelorMittal Orbit.

I say ‘slide’ casually, like it could be one of those old metal ones that always used to terrify me in parks when Bee was a toddler. You know the ones? They were really tall and normally in the 90s they just had concrete around the bottom.

Anyway.

It is NOT that, although it is no less terrifying.

ArcelorMittal Orbit is actually the largest sculpture in the U.K. which I did not know. It was designed by Sir Anish Kapoor and has two viewing platforms with amazing views our over London. It is also home to the world’s longest, fastest and tallest tunnel slide.

Let’s get an idea of the scale shall we?

Seen from the far side of the park, it doesn’t look too bad. Belle can basically fit it in her hand so how tall can it really be? View Post

As your children get older there are certain things that you come to realise may never happen again.

Some of them you positively look forward to ending – soft play for instance, and 6am wake ups on Sundays when you accidentally drank too much sambuca the night before – others you don’t realise you’re going to miss until it’s too late.

Dance shows fall into this category for me.

I don’t mean proper SHOWS, at school or in a church hall or whatever, I mean the kind of dance show where a chubby hand gives you a handmade ticket saying ‘Show starting NOW in the lounge!’ and you have to go and sit quietly on a box while your child improvises routines to their favourite songs.

Every time you clap and say ‘that was a fabulous show!’ they say ‘but it’s not done yet!’ and immediately think up a new dance.

At 15, Belle no longer dishes out those handmade tickets.

Sometimes though you’re allowed a little peek back at when they were younger, which is exactly what happened last night when we stayed at the Apex City of London Hotel near the Tower of London.

We’d had a bit of a stressful afternoon as we’d found ourselves walking TOWARDS a stadium just as a rugby match was finishing and everyone wanted to walk AWAY from it. It’s not Belle’s best thing. By the time we arrived at the hotel then we were feeling a bit frazzled. Fortunately the Apex Hotel is only a few minutes walk from Tower Hill station. (Its right by the Tower of London so if you fancy a family sight seeing trip over Easter then it’s ideal.) View Post