Category Archives: Family holidays

UK passport delays force families to cancel half-term trips

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Processing times remain lengthy, despite ministers pledging 700 more staff to deal with backlog

Families are suffering a nailbiting, up-to-the wire wait this weekend as they face the prospect of having to cancel their half-term holiday plans as ongoing Passport Office delays put trips abroad at risk.

The summer half-term break starts on Monday for much of the UK but a backlog of passport applications has caused months of delays, with some people now set to miss their holiday bookings.

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I took a trip to Scotland’s ‘secret coast’ – and found a quiet haven roaring back to life

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The scenic Cowal peninsula west of Glasgow is once again attracting holidaymakers with its mix of unspoiled nature, community ventures and cool places to stay

The remote Cowal peninsula, extending into the Firth of Clyde, is not the sort of place you’d expect to find artisan coffee roasters, outdoor infinity pools and modern outdoor sculpture. Take it from me: my mum was born here, in the faded Victorian resort of Dunoon. Outside shinty circles – those familiar with the local hockey-like game - “the secret coast” is little known, even in Scotland.

But a spotlight shone briefly on the village of Tighnabruaich last November, when artist David Blair’s vaulting 20-metre-long, six-metre-high Ark of Argyll – designed to raise awareness of the climate emergency – was visited by delegates to COP26. I’d heard about other new ventures breathing life into Cowal, so turned away from the Scotland of queueing campervans on Loch Lomond and went to investigate, with my 10-year-old daughter in tow.

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Latest Covid travel rules for the 10 most popular holiday destinations from UK

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The arrival of the Omicron variant and rising infection rates has led to myriad new rules that travellers have to negotiate before setting off

Spain has banned all non-vaccinated Britons from entering the country. The ban is expected to last until at least 31 December, at which point the rules will be reviewed.

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Stay calm and look fabulous: Holiday hassle and how to avoid it

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Driving, packing, parenting while driving … yes, summer holidays are here to torment us. Handily, so are Guardian writers on how to negotiate them

My holiday road rage is directed inward – at my own failures and miscalculations – although I accept it will not feel like that if you are sitting next to me. Sometimes these episodes are all I remember of the trips in question: running out of petrol halfway across a suspension bridge; the satnav voice that switched to Italian midway through a journey; that hyena I nearly hit in the middle of a hailstorm.

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‘I found a snake in the toilet!’: Guardian readers on their holiday disasters

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Holidays, especially abroad, are off the cards for many this summer. So it’s good to remember they aren’t always the idyllic break we dream of. Here are our readers worst experiences

We went on holiday for Christmas to a friend’s parents house in Marlo – a village in Victoria, Australia. We got there on Christmas Eve to find the only shop was pretty bare – so Christmas lunch was a frozen turkey roll, Fanta, chips and some frozen peas. I made a Christmas tree out of a stick and some toilet rolls, determined to be cheerful. On Christmas morning, I woke up and went outside. It was nice and hot – yay, beach day! Then I stepped on a very large brown snake on the doorstep and screamed. I found another snake in the lounge room, one in the toilet, and others all around the house. It was my idea of hell. I had no idea whether they were poisonous but it didn’t matter. I was terrified. Lesley Podesta, retired, Australia

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I spent lockdown on a Portuguese island

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Armona, off the Algarve, has been home since Covid’s second wave – and I’ve grown to love its beauty, simplicity and kindness

The sun is slowly rising over the Atlantic and I sit watching from the house I have rented overlooking dunes on the small Portuguese island of Armona. The sound of fishing boats heading out marks the pre-dawn, a time known as the blue hour, now a time when many are awake, having thrashed the bedding during another fretful pandemic night. I try to meditate and do breathing exercises to settle myself down. “It will be all right,” I say. And the sun says it back.

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‘Go Ape gone Viking’ – Denmark’s newest treetop attraction

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In the Danish town that is home to Lego HQ, Wow Park is a forest wonderland of swings, ziplines and treehouses immersed in nature

The birdsong is louder 14 metres up and there’s a citrusy tang of pine in the air. Scrambling to the top of a conifer with a six-year-old who suffers from vertigo wasn’t top of my post-lockdown bucket list, but after staring at the same four walls for weeks on end, there’s a welcome sense of perspective to spending time in a forest of 7,000 trees.

This is Wow Park in Billund, the Danish town that’s the home of Lego HQ, and that calls itself the “Capital of Children” – with ambitions to become the most child-friendly place in the world to live and work. Billund’s newest attraction is a treetop wonderland, the largest of its kind in the country, including suspension bridges, nets in the sky, giant bouncy balls, swings and ziplines; all crafted around the trunks of giant trees. It’s like Go Ape gone Viking, with a rough and ready, hand-whittled feel.

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Rulantica, Europa-Park’s new indoor water world

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In Germany’s Black Forest, the country’s largest theme park is making a splash with a vast indoor complex of 17 water slides, plus a ‘mythical’ island, ‘rivers’ and ‘caves’ open year-round

I’m ushered into what looks like an upright glass coffin, told to fold my hands across my chest in the classic corpse position – and then push a green button. I’m wondering exactly what I’ve got myself into when the trapdoor falls open and I plummet into a tube of fast-flowing water. It’s up my nose, in my mouth; I can’t see and can hardly breathe for a few tumultuous seconds before the gradient of the water slide reduces from vertical to merely steep and I’m propelled around more bends and spat out at the bottom. I feel like I’ve been flushed down a toilet.

The Vildfål is one of the more extreme experiences at the new Rulantica indoor water park, which opened on 28 November. Half an hour’s drive north of Freiburg im Breisgau in south-west Germany, it’s next to Europa-Park, the country’s largest theme park. Both are owned by the Mack family, a dynasty of entrepreneurs who have been enticing visitors to this corner of the Black Forest since 1975. In building the €180m Rulantica, the family has made its biggest single investment to date.

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