There is nothing my family loves more than a day out together exploring somewhere new, especially if it is outdoors. It makes me laugh when we announce to the kids that we are off to the beach, a country park or perhaps a National Trust property and we get a groan as they say they would rather stay home and play on the computer, do some colouring or make believe.
Then magically it is as if they come alive when we arrive and the four year age gap between my son and daughters is forgotten and off they all run to play amongst the trees, to look around the living history exhibits, or to collect stones on the beach. Wherever we go they have fun and I am so glad that we just tell them they have to come with us and get on with it.
Of course it wasn't always like this, JJ never used to be the cool gamer that he is now, as a youngster all he wanted to do was be outside and run off his excess energy. Nothing pleased him more than a day to a theme park like Chessington where he could enjoy some rides, have a picnic and perhaps meet up with his grandparents.
Nowadays he tells me the ideal day out would more be about heading into a new town to explore the shops, have lunch and then perhaps go to the cinema. Which is lucky as that is exactly what we did on Thursday, we took the train from Battle to Tunbridge Wells and had a good explore and an interesting day out together.
I asked the girls what their favourite days out were and Miss E says London Zoo rates highly and this is because she had a trip up there recently with her best friend as a birthday treat and they both enjoyed seeing the baby sloth Edward.
Miss M said her favourite would be a trip to Butlins for the day, so she could ride the funfair, swim in the leisure pool and play crazy golf and penny machines. That girls wants everything together and some of that might be because my children have been immensely lucky and got to enjoy some amazing days out that we might not normally have been able to afford, due to me being a blogger and being offered lots of great review trips.
Enter to win with Southeastern
Of course it also helps to look for good deals to help your days out be more affordable. Many times we have used coupons or vouchers from shops and train lines to allow us BOGOF or reduced entry. I also noticed that Southeastern have a great competition running at the moment and you can enter to win either -
- a year’s family (two adults and up to five children) membership to the ZSL London Zoo
- a year’s access to Dreamland Margate (two adults and four children).
- Both prizes are accompanied by a Coast and Country picnic basket and £75 voucher for Ottolenghi (valid for 1 year in-store purchase only) to complete your family’s ideal day out!
The competition is hosted and run by Southeastern and you can enter OVER HERE. Entry is super easy and the competition is open until 15th March 2016.
I was interested to see that my kids are very much the norm when you look at the findings from the recent research undertaken by Opinium Research on behalf of Southeastern. This showed that 29% of the children surveyed said a theme park would be in their top three places to visit for a family day out. The cinema came second at 17% and then the beach at 15%. I was surprised the beach didn't feature more highly for my children but I suppose as we now live just 20 minutes away it is a regular feature for them and has lost some of its attraction.
The research also showed that of the under 12s from the South East that took part in the study, three quarters (74%) said they’d rather spend time with their family than play computer games and 89% would choose a day out with family over watching their favourite TV programmes. These kind of figures really rebuke the idea that our nation is turning kids into couch potatoes with no sense of fun and adventure. In fact just watch this short vox pop below and see for yourself what kids want to do -
So how about your child, what is there favourite way to spend a family day out?
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