With the hope of nicer weather on the horizon and businesses starting to open up again after a long 5 months many families will be planning trips. We love heading out and exploring our area and venturing slightly further afield and are defiantly looking forward to doing so over the next few months. Given the current situation with covid 19 more families will opt to have a staycation this year, with many choosing day trips.
I know I am not alone when it comes to planning ahead and it’s something that Dad of 3 gets frustrated at me for as I tend to try and plan for all eventualities. To cut down on time I often have a bag with some basics in ready to grab as we head out. The bag usually contains a towel, sun cream, talcum powder, first aid kit. Then all I need to add to it will be change of clothes usually only bottoms (skirt, shorts, trousers) snacks, plastic bag (in case of car sickness). I may also add wellies if we’re heading somewhere that’s going to be muddy. Am I the only one who does this? Is there anything else you would add if you were heading out on a day trip?
Now the children are of an age they can help us decide where we are going things often not straight forward. So we’ve started making a list of places we would like to visit and we try to work our way through it. Sometimes we are restricted by the weather or time constraints so we try to include a list of places that are both within an hours drive and some a further away. The usual places we include on the list are National Trust properties we want to visit, castles, beaches, cinema, museums and country parks. Where are your favourite places to visit? Now with covid restrictions in place I have started going through our current list to see if we need to book in advance, if only the outdoor attractions are open, if they have takeaway food available and so on. These things mean that for some places we would like to visit we can’t be spontaneous like we were previously. Thankfully there are a few place we like to visit that don’t require prebooking so if we have a day with good weather we can head to one of those.
I’m also starting to notice that more and more places no longer use cash to pay for parking and its all done via card payment or an app on your phone. It got me thinking about fuel cards. There are many benefits to fuel cards, more of my friends have started using them and I can see they could be handy especially for day trips or staycations. As I’ve already mentioned lots of places have now become cashless so having a fuel card would be handy to have. They also enable you to keep track of how much fuel you are using and therefore budget for it. I for one try to stick to a budget as much as possible and they also provide flexibility as they are can be used in most petrol stations. It also means you don’t have to worry about running out of fuel and not having the money to get more. So one less thing to worry about.
Do you have any tips for planning a family day trip? Are you planning a day trip soon, I’d love to hear where you are heading. Wherever you are going I hope you have a lovely time.
Disclaimer: This is a collaborative post however the content is 100% my own