Anne Dickins MBE is a Team GB paracanoeist and Olympic gold medallist. She has two teenage kids and as a family their favourite holidays are Neilson sailing holidays. I went to meet Anne to find out why these holidays work so well for them. This is what she told me: I’d not considered this kind of […]
Bushcraft: fires and shelters
In Bushcraft course: part one I described my first evening in the woods and going to bed in a hammock. This is what happened next. Bushcraft course: part two I’m comfortable and cosy in my woodland hammock and I fall asleep easily. But two hours later my bladder wakes me up. The night air feels […]
Bushcraft: sleeping in a hammock
Bushcraft course: part one As I walk through the darkness of the woods to my hammock I wonder if I’m going to be able to sleep. I’ve never slept outside before. I’m wearing a thermal top and leggings, a long-sleeved cotton top, two wool jumpers, a pair of fleece-lined thermal trousers, wool socks, walking boots, […]
Area 47 activities
Area 47 Area 47 is a fantastic extreme sports adventure park in the Austrian Tirol. It offers everything from a high ropes course to white water rafting to blobbing to motocross and many more adventurous activities. I spent a day there with my 11 year-old son this summer and we both really enjoyed ourselves. My […]
Holiday snaps: Yaverland, Isle of Wight
I took this photo one morning on a trip to the Isle of Wight during the 2013 October half term holiday. I was with my husband and son and we’d just arrived at Yaverland beach for a guided fossil hunting walk. There’d been a huge storm across southern England during the night and we weren’t sure whether or not the […]
Young Driver: driving lessons for kids
By Izzy Schifano My daughter had her first driving lesson when she was 16, and afterwards she wrote this account of how it went. Her lesson was with Young Driver, an organisation which teaches 11-17 year-olds to drive at specialist centres across the UK. When I turn seventeen next year, I plan on learning to drive as soon as […]
Camping at Embers Bentley
‘If we were at home I’d be on the Xbox’ says my 11 year-old son. It’s a sunny, breezy, August morning and we’re in a lush, green field in the Sussex countryside. He’s sitting on a deckchair happily toasting breakfast marshmallows on the fire which he and his 13 year-old cousin have created in the […]
Aqua Dome, Ötztal valley, Austria
As I float on my back in the warm, salty water I enjoy the feeling of weightlessness. The rugged green mountains and the blue summer sky above fill my vision. And then I realise that I can hear music even though my ears are underwater. I don’t know how but the sound isn’t distorted. I […]
Area 47 in the Austrian Tirol
My son sits in the August sun on the wooden decking. He’s completely still and seems mesmerised by what we’re watching. We’re at the edge of a turquoise lake in a beautiful place called Area 47 in the Ötztal valley in the Austrian Tirol. We’re staying higher up the valley at the village of Obergurgl […]
Embers: family campsites with campfires
When Murray McPherson took his children camping for the first time in the UK he wasn’t impressed. ‘It was awful’, says the South African, who’s been living in the UK for fifteen years. Murray wanted his children to experience camping like he had as a child back home. He wanted lovely spacious locations where his […]