Travelling with children

Children's holidays

Travelling through Europe with children needn’t be the nightmare you’re afraid of! In fact, if you put a plan together it can be a stress-free, enjoyable part of your children’s holiday – even if you’re driving all the way to Spain!

Thanks to advances in modern technology, travel-friendly items such as portable DVD players and hand-held games consoles have helped to make travelling with children a lot easier – not forgetting of course the brand new or well-thumbed magazines and books. Team that with regular rest stops and you’ll keep everyone happy.

Driving through France to Italy

We like to break our journey up every two to three hours or so. Driving through France is great as they tend to have designated areas spaced out about every 20km, alternating between service stations and rest stops. This makes it easier to plan stops especially when travelling with children.

The main difference between the service stations and rest stops is that the service stations have the restaurants and petrol stations (and can be expensive). Rest stops will have more basic facilities, like toilets (remember to have loo roll and hand sanitiser with you); picnic benches and sometimes a children’s play area. The signs on the motorway advise you of the service types available.

Fuel

If we need fuel, we tend to use our satnav to locate a large supermarket with petrol station near to the motorway in order to keep costs down. Breaking up our journey this way has enabled us to discover places we’d never have come across otherwise.

Our car runs on LPG and we need to remember several things before we set off:

You need an adaptor to fill up with LPG fuel on the continent
Although you can borrow one from some service stations, it’s worth buying your own
But one adaptor doesn’t fit all across the different European countries
On Sundays and Bank Holidays be wary at supermarkets’ un-manned stations - petrol and diesel may still be available to ‘pay at pump’ but LPG is not.
Check your route before travelling – there are some roads that LPG-powered vehicles cannot use