Practical Tips for a UK Family Road Trip
While we didn’t intend to set off on a great long road trip of the UK this half-term, that’s exactly what we ended up doing!
Sadly I injured myself last week and had family I needed to visit and work trips to make, so my amazing husband volunteered to be chief chauffeur and of course that meant the kids had to come too.
Road tripping 5 or 6 hours in the UK can get you from one end of the country to the other, so here are our practical tips for a family road trip (kids included)!
Plan your route
This is so important! If you’re coming to the UK for leisure, work out what is most important for you to see and do while you’re here! We were on a tight schedule and had some restrictions as to what we were able to fit in and when, so here’s what our road trip itinerary looked like:
Day 1 - Canterbury, Bournemouth, Yorkshire
Day 2 - Yorkshire
Day 3 - Yorkshire
Day 4 - Southampton
Day 5 - Southampton, Canterbury
Day 6 - Dymchurch
We’ve covered a lot of ground this half-term, but I do not recommend doing a drive on day 1 like we did for leisure purposes!
*BONUS TIP* - download a sat nav onto your phone called Waze! It’s the best one out there for diverting you out of upcoming traffic and hazards.
Schedule breaks
It goes without saying, you are going to need breaks if you’re travelling with kids.
Travelling north to south or south to north often like we do, we’ve gotten to know a few of the GOOD service stations. Our top few:
Cherwell Valley (M40 - near Oxford)
Tibshelf (M1 - near Derby)
Cobham (M25 - near Guildford)
Membury (M4 - near Swindon)
There are probably more I could put on this list, but I’m so terrible at remembering service station names! I seem to always end up at a different one on each journey. These ones will cover you if you’re going north to south, east to west or vice versa!
Book a hotel between destinations
If you’re covering a lot of ground in one day, it’s worth breaking your journey up with a hotel stay. We’ve stayed in 2 hotels now in Yorkshire and Southampton to avoid having to do ridiculously early mornings with the kids! It was great comparing lots of different options through the travel agency to find the perfect fit for us.
By the way - who knew that Toby Carvery had a hotel chain? We certainly didn’t until we stayed there this week!
The Toby Carvery hotel was a big win for these two!
