I’ve just taken the kids on a very inappropriate short break. And we had the best time. I’d done my research beforehand, of course, consulting the guides about the best things for a family to do and see in Lille in northern France. They suggested the zoo at the Citadelle and the Forum des Sciences park on the edge of town, with a planetarium and lots of interactive exhibits.

Our quest to have a proper family break began well. Taking the train from London to Lille took only 90 minutes – far less than visiting relatives in Liverpool. But after that it didn’t look at all promising. I’d booked the Hotel Barrière barely a baguette’s length from the Eurostar terminal so we could walk there in a few minutes, dump our overnight bags, and take a 10-minute stroll to the centre of town. It turned out that Hotel Barrière’s main clientele carry briefcases, not backpacks and Hello Kitty suitcases, which is probably why it was such a bargain (business hotels in public holidays are always good value). But the rooms were large enough to comfortably fit all five of us and the staff more welcoming than many an establishment that brands itself for families. They recommended we ate at La Brassiere des 3 Brasseurs opposite the old Lille train station. This is  in fact a micro-brewery serving very fine Flanders ale, but the 10-year-old twins hadn’t enjoyed themselves so much in a restaurant for a long time, tucking into junior steak frites, Alsace sausages and flamenkeuches – north France’s answer to pizza, a bit thinner and with no tomato paste or stringy cheese.

After eating came shopping, where we strayed even further into grown-up territory. France still boasts gun shops, openly selling shiny black pistols and battered leather holsters like a scene from High Chaparral. We strayed into Henry Huret on the Rue de Paris and marvelled at the extraordinary goods on display. As well as guns, the shop sold anything sharp – knives, scissors, daggers that looked as if they could feature in a Royal Shakespeare Company production, oyster shuckers… We bought a metal crabclaw-cracker, watching it being carefully wrapped up in brown paper with envelope ends and tied with old-fashioned string by a man wearing a dark-blue heavy cotton apron. The whole performance took more than half an hour. The kids were entranced.

We never made it to the zoo, or the science park. But we did wander around the cobbled old town with its wavy-roofed spindly houses as wide as our stretched-out arms. We peeked in through the window at a man carving the arm of a cello and admired the small smart cakes laid out in short neat rows – works of art as great as anything found in Lille’s famed Palais des Beaux-Arts. And we took the driverless metro out to the fleamarket at Wazemmes, where Lille’s North African population shop, which was rather like taking a morning trip to Morocco.

But we liked our adventures to adult-land best. Neither the hotel, nor the restaurant, nor the shop would feature in any family-friendly guide. Which only proves that family-friendliness isn’t about facilities but attitude. And about having a little bit of an adventure, even in somewhere as fabulously close and convenient to reach as Lille.

Laura Schaefer is the author of Planet Explorers Chicago, Planet Explorers New York City, Planet Explorers Philadelphia, Planet Explorers Disneyland and Planet Explorers Disney Cruise Line, and the forthcoming Planet Explorers Universal Resort Orlando and Planet Explorers London.

I’ve been writing for kids ever since I was in college in the 1990s, and although I don’t yet have kids myself, I think I have a ‘tween’ sensibility, even though I’m now 32. If a fact isn’t genuinely fun and interesting to me, I don’t include it in my new series of e-books for kids, Planet Explorers. My younger brother, who is in the themepark industry, is the perfect fact-checker for me, with the same ability to look at things through a kid’s eyes.

The philosophy behind the series is empowering kids – I loved travelling as a kid and want to empower my readers to be part of planning holidays with their parents. That way, the trip is more fun and fulfilling for the whole family.

Planet Explorers Walt Disney World, aimed at kids aged 8-12, contains fun facts, tips and active hyperlinks for those who want to dig a little deeper into everything Disney. It’s designed to be read on smartphones, Kindles, Nooks or iPads – I wanted to give kids an easy way to become Walt Disney World experts without having to carry around an actual book. Most ‘tweens’ will have their phone with them while travelling. E-book technology allows readers to jump from information about the ‘Pirates of the Caribbean’ attraction to a website about notorious real-life pirates such as Blackbeard. Or a kid can quickly check out the height requirement for The Twilight Zone Tower of Terror, then read a little bit about classic ‘Twilight Zone’ episodes while they wait in line.

I cut out all the stuff kids would find boring if they looked through a regular travel guide and focus on attractions and fun facts, plus lots of pictures and a quiz at the end to check the user’s knowledge. A lot of parents have told me they’re excited about the easy way the guidebooks incorporate learning about geography, history, art and science into real-life experiences.

Rhonda Carrier is Takethefamily’s Head of Content.

I’ve written before about the joys of ‘holidaying’ close to home, and about the pleasure of short breaks with kids. This year I’ve been out and about all over the north of England with my boys, on day-trips, overnighters or mini-breaks. With the help of our money-saving Family & Friends Railcard, the opportunities for cultural excursions within easy reach of home are almost unlimited. York, Leeds, Liverpool and Newcastle are all great northern cities we’ve explored together in 2011 and at very little cost.

Manchester is lucky enough to have an award-winning online magazine, Creative Tourist, published by a consortium of nine local museums and galleries who share a vision of staging “intelligent, thought-provoking and outward-looking events” and of celebrating their city at the same time. It’s been so successful that 40% of users say that it totally changed their perceptions of Manchester.

One such event was this past weekend’s Manchester Weekender, a series of one-off, intimate events that aim to “sum up the city”. The agenda for 2011 included ‘cultural provocateur’ and northerner Jarvis Cocker interviewed by DJ Dave Haslam, author of ‘Manchester, England’, a classic guide to the city’s radical and musical history. There was also a whole raft of family-oriented events, many of them free and drop-in, which meant you could take the weekend at a fairly relaxed pace, generally dropping into venues and spending as long as you wanted there depending on what snagged your interest.

One exception was the book-ahead Family Floating Day Out, part of the concurrent Manchester Food & Drink Festival. Beginning outside the waterside gastro-pub The Mark Addy (itself handy for the family-friendly Peoples’ History Museum), this boat-trip took families along the historic waterway connecting Manchester itself with Salford Quays, home to the new BBC HQ. Tables on board the boat were filled with craft materials for making paper boats and flags to wave each time we spotted one of the items listed – herons (tick), graffiti (tick), and so on. The foodie element was a currant-filled Chorley cake (a relative of the Eccles cake) to munch on as you worked. Once you’ve arrived, there’s lots of things to do at the Quays: we took the opportunity to revisit the Imperial War Museum North, where the Weekender event was a pop-up darkroom where kids could develop their own photos. Then it was home again, by return-boat or by sleek new tram.

There are few things better in life than a spot of Sunday-morning jazz, and the Weekender again came up trumps with a second chance to hear Living Story Music Ensemble’s jazz interpretation of Julia Donaldson and Axel Scheffler’s ‘The Smartest Giant in Town’, which had premiered at the Manchester Jazz Festival this summer. Performed at the ever-wonderful Museum of Science and Industry (MOSI), this was preceded by a puppet-making workshop during which kids could make finger-puppets of the various animal characters from the book. Although this was pitched at younger kids, my older boys (7 and 9) were transfixed by the musicians interpreting the various animals through their different instruments, and we were all still singing the catchy songs long after we’d left the museum and wandered back through town.

The Whitworth Art Gallery was the one venue we hadn’t been to at some point in the past (much to our shame). After lunch in its excellent café, The Modern Caterer, we headed for its Weekender event, Dark Drawings, which allowed us to create our own shadow projections on the gallery walls. This was part of the gallery’s current exhibition, Dark Matters (until 15 Jan 2012), a stunning show on the notions of shadow, darkness and illusion that I’ll be revisiting without the distraction of kids. Afterwards, we happened upon a ‘scientific drawing event’ based on molecular patterns that was taking part on the other side of the gallery – part of the Big Draw 2011, running nationwide for the whole of October.

These were just our choice of events, and there were dozens more, mainly free, happening all over the city all weekend. For me, it was a case of trying to find activities to suit children of different ages (my youngest son is 3), but I’ll be leaving him behind to try out another great Creative Tourist offering, the Manchester Mini Explorer (£8), a beautifully produced activity bag aimed at ages 5–10, containing 4 self-guided trails (each taking around 2hrs, one of them including Castlefield with its canals and Roman remains), plus games, puzzles, fun cards and discounts for museums and galleries. But more about the Mini Explorer in due course… 

Self-catering apartments are always a good choice for a city break with kids, and Stay Manchester is a fine example within very easy reach of Piccadilly Station. The firm also has high-spec modern apartments in Liverpool, Birmingham, Dublin, Paris, Rome, Amsterdam, Ljubljana in Slovenia and Orlando, Florida.

See our City Breaks with Kids tips page for more on self-catering apartments and on urban getaways in general.

Dahlia Nahome lives in Santa Teresa, Costa Rica, with her husband and two children. As well as running her rental business, Costa Rican Vacation and Internet radio station Pura Sonica, she enjoys writing about and raising the profile of the Nicoya Peninsula and has had work published on various travel blogs.

Nearly two years ago, my husband and I decided to travel with our then 10-month-old daughter and 3-year-old son. We’d both done extensive travelling pre-kids and knew that we had a window of about 4 or 5 years before the kids needed to be settled in a school somewhere. We mapped out a route around the world, managed to get sabbaticals from our jobs and sold everything we owned.

Our first stop was Costa Rica – and that’s as far as we got, having fallen in love with a little place called Santa Teresa on the Nicoya Peninsula, where we have since settled. When people ask me what it was like moving here, my first response is often about how easy it all was – how exhausted and unfit we felt when we arrived but how quickly we started to feel relaxed and inspired by the beauty of this place. I started running for the first time in about six years and my husband Jeremy started surfing. Within three months of being here, our son Leon was swimming like a fish and had become pretty impressive on a surfboard too.

Leon and Delilah have a ball here, living life in a very free and spirited way, surrounded by nature. They know what high and low tide mean, they watch the moon and they love the sunsets. I, on the other hand, have had to deal with my fears of creepy crawlies, come to terms with living a quite isolated life and learn Spanish from scratch – all of which I am happy to say, I have done.

Looking back, there were a few things we did that have really made our move easy and some things that I would have done differently. In future, I’d pack much more lightly; sometimes there are no trolleys to help you in airports and you have to carry everything – including two sleeping children. In fact, you can buy pretty much all the things you need when you get here. On the other hand, two musts for me were a LittleLife travel cot and a lightweight buggy for airports.

I do advise pre-booking stopovers – and investing in comfy ones! When we first arrived in San José, it was late, we’d been traveling for about 20 hours and we were all exhausted. We checked into the Hampton Inn Hotel, which has a free shuttle to the airport, a swimming pool, a nice buffet breakfast, and big beds.

The other observation I have about the change we have made to our lives is that wherever you live, you’ll still have the same parental worries and anxieties that parents have the world over: Are my kids getting a good education? Are they safe? Will they get sick? Some things will never change, no matter how far you travel.

Abigail Flanagan regularly contributes to TakeTheFamily, Sainsbury’s Magazine and The Guardian on travel, parenting and consumer issues.

The mists are just clearing as your dawn game drive begins. Giraffes gambol nearby; in the distance, zebra, wildebeest and black rhinos are stirring. It’s another glorious day in… erm … Kent.

Port Lympne Wild Animal Park’s overnight safari is proof you don’t have to head abroad for an unforgettable family break. Transported by safari vehicle into the 100-acre ‘African Experience’, where the animals run free, you hang out with rangers and eat African food, with the option to spend the night in the on-site safari lodge.

Our island might be little, but when it comes to amazing family holidays it’s big on surprises. From converted stations and trains to lighthouses, windmills, medieval towers and castles, there’s accommodation to match an entire library of bedtime favourites. 

Carisbrooke Castle on the Isle of Wight, for instance, once served as prison to Charles I, and your apartment – previously the officers’ garrison - is set right into the castle walls. By day, Carisbrooke is open to the public, so you can join all the organized fun. ‘Out of hours’, most of the grounds are yours alone to explore, so you can roam the battlements, re-enact battles and be kings of all you survey.

With the recession, camping is more popular than ever, and Britain has seen a veritable explosion in the number of cool campsites. Many don’t even require you to bring your own gear, and some offer you the chance to try out a funky Mongolian yurt or North American tipi. Some of the very best ‘glamping’ holidays are those offered by Feather Down Farms on about 30 beautifully situated, family-friendly smallholdings nationwide. Each farm has a handful of safari-style tents with real beds, a wood-burning stove and a flushing loo. Lit by candles and oil lamps, they’re frankly magical. Each farm is unique, but at each one you’ll find animals to befriend, eggs to collect and other kids for yours to bond with.

If Canvas is just not you, Forest Holidays has seriously swanky cabins in Scotland, Cornwall, Yorkshire, Nottinghamshire, and Gloucestershire, although the stunning locations combined with activities such as ranger walks, cycling, kayaking and fishing will ensure you spend more time outside than in

So let’s all ditch those ‘Carry On’ stereotypes of dour landladies, nylon sheets and grim, grey, dust-ridden B&Bs. Holidaying at home really can be the stuff that dreams are made of.

This month's guest family travel blog is by single-parent adventurer Theodora Sutcliffe, who has visited 19 countries with her son. Follow their adventures as they travel long-term around the world at www.travelswithanineyearold.com.

“Ruins are boring.”

‘Or, so we are supposed to believe’, kids think. Culture is something, like medicine, that parents should impose on their children in small doses, with a hefty hit of sweetener to help it go down.

You know. First a ruin, then a theme-park. A museum, then an ice-cream …

Now, I’m a great believer in Jamie Lee Curtis’ fabulous maxim that parenting is a combination of bribes and threats.  But even the shortest trip to Greece should show you that, at least when it comes to ruins, threats are no longer required.  That goes especially for the ‘Horrible Histories’ generation, not to mention fans of the young demi-god Percy Jackson, who will, most likely, know more Greek myth than you.

Let’s take Mycenae, the awe-inspiringly sombre hilltop town, with its Cyclopean walls of giant stone.

Did I say ‘Cyclopean’? I meant, of course, ‘One-eyed giants built this city. The same ones who wanted to eat Odysseus in the Odyssey.’ (The Percy Jackson crew, by the way, will be a mine of information on this species.)

Mycenae was, of course, the site of the fall of the House of Atreus.

“Well, you see, it all started going wrong for them when Tantalus cooked up his own son as a meal for the gods…”

Now, if that’s not going to get the imagination going, what is?

Well, perhaps the tale of Agamemnon sacrificing his own daughter to get the winds to help him sail to Troy. Or the story of the bath his wife prepared for him on his return, and the dressing gown – without holes for his head and arms – that she slipped on him so her new boyfriend could hack him to pieces with an axe.

These are not the stories you’ll find in most of the guidebooks. But they are magical tales that transform a ruin into living, breathing drama.

The blood, guts and gore of Greek myth add a whole new layer of excitement to the magic of scrambling over the walls of ancient cities or racing down the streets that once divided millennia-old houses.

Perhaps you’ll visit the crimson remains of Knossos, the Minoan city in Crete.

“Mysteriously wiped out by a cataclysm, perhaps a tsunami, perhaps invasion.”

Or, for children who love a good story, “The maze where Theseus trapped and killed the Minotaur, the monster who was half-man, half-bull.”

Or Delphi, the dazzlingly beautiful mountain gorge where the immortal but not un-ageing priestess was preserved in a bottle, withering by the day.

“She asked to be immortal. She forgot to ask to be forever young.”

Or Olympus. The place where Greek athletes wrestled NAKED (apart from a leather thong) and the gods held parley on the summit. And also the inspiration, of course, for our very own Olympics.

Or the entrance to the Styx, in today’s Mani, where Charon the boatman took vanquished souls across the river to his master, Hades.

The ruins of this wonderful country are soaked with generation after generation of primeval gore. And when we find the story, and tell the story, they fascinate. Because if there is one thing Greek ruins aren’t, it’s boring.

I’ve raised my children badly. I’ve never read them A.A. Milne. They don’t know about the adventures of Heffalump, Piglet or Pooh. Their imaginations have never wandered in to the Hundred Acre Wood. But with Disney bringing out a new Winnie the Pooh movie [15 April], I thought it was time to take them for a weekend at Ashdown Park hotel, which organises Tigger Escape breaks. At least there would be a swimming pool for them to splash around in if attempts to fascinate them with my childhood tales failed.

Ashdown Park has Pooh themed weekends because the nearby wood is where AA Milne drew inspiration for Christopher Robin and his friends. It’s not difficult to tread in Tigger’s footsteps. Ashdown Forest has car parks with names like Piglet, just in case you didn’t know why you were there. Even the signposts made me sigh – Heffalump Trap, Galleon’s Lap, the North Pole.

We head for Poohsticks Bridge car park. I’m determined to introduce the ten-year-old twins and the teenager to my favourite childhood game. They may have heard of Kanga and Eeyore, but they have never heard of a Pooh stick. They thought it was something to do with dogs in the park. I explained, ‘You throw a little twig in the river from the bridge, then rush to the other side of the bridge to watch it go by. The person whose stick comes out from under the bridge first wins.’

The twins look at me, saying nothing. I think they wish they’d brought their iPods into the woods. Then ten-year-old Savanna mutters, ‘Cool’ – just to please her mum. The teenager grins smugly. She’s got her iPod with her.

We trudge along the well-trodden forest trail, stamped flat by toddlers’ feet. We’re on a pilgrimage through the twisted beech and oak trees, alongside other families who still push buggies. I get the twins to collect short straight sticks along the path. The teenager points out that there’s plenty of real poo, left from the horses that share the bridleway.

The bridge itself is just like the one in the E.H. Shepard’s pencil drawing - underwhelming small and very wooden. I am ridiculously excited. I’ve imagined this bridge so many times and HERE IT IS. I could tell the twins were curious how their mother, usually such a sensible woman, could get so emotional about such a minor site. She’d taken them to awe inspiring places all over the world and this certainly wasn’t one of them. Savanna, a stickler for rules, read out the Playing Poohsticks instructions we’d been given to take with us by the hotel. Ready, Steady, Go! And we throw our sticks into the fast flowing mud-brown stream.

I look around at the other mums, standing a little too quietly on the bridge. It’s a place to remember when we were very young, and tell our children about it. ‘My favourite bit of Pooh was …’ begins most conversations in this sacred spot.

The good mothers have come with carrier bags full of pre-cut pooh sticks. The twins, completely enraptured by the simple game, run out of sticks and we have to scramble for some more in the mud. I reminisce. They run about. The teenager listens to the Kings of Leon under the rustling leaves. We’re all rather happy.

Back at Ashdown Park, an old convent converted into classic countryside English hotel, there’s a Tigger tea with cake forks, tea strainers, carrot sticks, honey sandwiches and chocolate cake with Pooh scrawled on it in icing. The teenager sniffed and opened her copy of Jane Eyre, being far too old to be interested in silly children’s stories. Then, as she finished chapter four, she surreptitiously sneaked a carrot stick. That’s what Pooh can do. Make everyone enjoy being a child.

‘We’re going on a girlie getaway. So we need to talk about girlie things,’ says Savanna, aged 10.
‘Like what?’ I ask.
‘Girlie things,’ says Savanna. ‘Like celebrities.’
‘Celebrities are bor-ing,’ says Storme, aged 17, from the back seat. ‘What about we chat about Jordan?’ She didn’t mean the country.
‘I don’t want to talk about Jordan,’ I say, overtaking a tractor.
‘Make-up then!’ suggests Savanna.
‘No!’ I say. I’m not a very girlie girl.
‘’Music!’ says Storme and Savanna in unison. Then Savanna remembers, ‘Mum knows nothing about modern music.’
We sit in silence for few miles before the two kids take up their iPod, an earpiece each, listening to Scouting for Girls.

We’re on the road to Ballina, County Mayo, for a Girlie Getaway at the Ice House hotel. We pass more tractors and I wish my son – my only son – was with us so we could count them and admire their primary colours – yellow, red, blue. Instead, I’m off on this girlie weekend and already we’re bickering. My two daughters and I always argue. I put it down to us all being at awkward times in our lives hormone-wise - a menopausal mum, a teenager and a pre-pubescent. But we’ve resolved, for this weekend, to try and chill and chat instead of stress and scream. We’ve pledged not to steal each other’s lipgloss for two whole days. I switch on the car radio and wonder if our break will hormone heaven or hormone hell.

After the car, the Ice House is an oasis of calm. The slate floors cool our nerviness, the lime green furniture refreshes. It’s not cold, but, teetering over the edge of the River Moy, it used to be where the fisherman stored their catch and you can still feel a shiver running through the building. Already we were more relaxed.

Soon, we were all pinked up. The girls were given pink lemonade, with pink champagne for me. We went out to the hot tub overlooking the river, watching the ducks and the boats float by. The Ice House was having a very cooling effect. We ate a huge supper – my girls are gannets – chatting easily. Back in the room we pulled on our pink bathrobes. Chick flicks were stacked up next to our DVD player, and we slouched down on the sofa in front of Love Actually, as the river darkened below. It was the ultimate girls night in.

Perhaps it was the film that made us feel soppy, but, ‘Let’s have a real conversation,’ said Storme. ‘You know – about something important.’
‘Ok,’ said Savanna. ‘How about us. We’re important. We could talk about each other.’
And we did. About how lovely we each looked in our fluffy pink bathrobes. And about how good it was to go away together. And how we didn’t miss the boys at all. Not even though they would have counted the ducks.

Are you a good parent? I doubt a single mum or dad would ever answer, ‘Yes. Bloody good in fact.’ Most of us feel like failures when it comes to looking after our kids. Books purporting to help us along the road to positive parenting – from Tanya Byron to Gina Ford – only make things worse. They simply point out everything you’re doing wrong, without suggesting a way to find the energy to put things right.

It’s even direr when it comes to being a good parent on holiday. Holidays are supposed to make us relax. But we all know they also bring their own little tensions, especially in the days running up to departure. The twins are soon turning ten, so I believe they should take at least a soupcon of responsibility for packing their own bags. Perhaps Savanna could count the number of knickers she needs and River the number of socks? He could at least make sure he only takes pairs. Last time I left him to choose his own holiday wardrobe, he didn’t even pick a matching pair of shoes.

So all this leads to tensions and tetchiness, mainly mine. Then there’s the car and/or airport to contend with. More bad moods by me as I dish out the wet wipes. And when we eventually get there, I just want to flop with a good thriller. But ‘Hooray!’ think the twins, ‘We’ve got mum 24/7 for a change!’ and they launch into a long list of activities they have been wanting to do with me for months but have never had the chance, from reading a chapter of that book to playing chess. More tetchiness.

With all this in mind, I’m a little perturbed that luxury hotel group The Town House Collection is inviting kids to nominate a mother or father for a Mother (or Father) of the Year Award. Although the Award isn’t for being the best holiday parent, I still feel the pressure. What if the twins start feeling they have the right to assess my travel companion credentials? What if they find me lacking in the good holiday parenting department? Should I start moderating my moods to make sure they give me high marks?

Perhaps I’ll let them write a out of term time report on the return from our next trip on how I did, giving me marks out of ten. It’s not the most bonkers idea. It might even lead to all of us having a better time, including me.

At least I don’t have to worry too much about whether I win the Town House’s Award. It’s only for families who live in Scotland. Phew.