London Family Break: On a family sized budget
by Rhonda Carrier
17 September 2008
It started with a blue whale. How big are they exactly? Bigger than an elephant? Bigger than a bus? How big is 30 metres, though Mum? As big as a Boeing jet? Yeah, but what does that look like, in real life? Sometimes, only seeing is believing.
My oldest sons, now four and five, spent their earliest years in London, but despite having photos to prove it, they didn’t remember seeing the life-size model of the blue whale, or the actual whale skeleton, at the Natural History Museum. I kept promising to take them again, and when I saw a deal going on a family room at a Travelodge in King’s Cross and a correspondingly good-value train ticket with the trainline, I decided the time was ripe for a city break to revisit old haunts – and to introduce baby Zac to London. But with a very limited budget, I was going to need to be creative – and careful. And I managed, spending less than £350 over a four-day break, including accommodation and eating out. This is how I did it.
Day 1. Blooming Lovely Bloomsbury
Arriving at midday but unable to check into our hotel until 3pm, we strolled down through Bloomsbury to Coram’s Fields, a unique park and playground off-limits to any adult without a child in tow, meaning you can let your kids roam its seven acres knowing they can’t get out or fall prey to dubious characters. As wall as lawns for picnicking, it has play areas for different age groups, sandpits, sports pitches and a pets corner with, goats, ducks and more. Despite being a charity and not a public park, it’s completely free – and even the Austrian veggie café is cheap, with some of the least expensive, and best, coffees in central London, plus hot dishes, sandwiches, ice cream and more.
After playing happily for many hours, the kids had to be dragged away, in the direction of the nearby Brunswick Centre , an iconic 1960s housing block now full of trendy shops and child-friendly chain restaurants such as Carluccio’s, plus a giant branch of Waitrose, where we stocked up on baby food and nappies plus breakfast goodies to eat in our room the next morning. Then it was over to for Giraffe – between 5 and 7pm it has a a two-course meal deal for £6.95, as well as two-for-one cocktails – before strolling through the evening sunshine to our hotel 10 minutes away.
Day 2: Animal Crackers
After a lie-in and a cheap breakfast in our room, we headed to lovely St James’s Park. Keeping within a central area easily navigated by bus, I was able to both avoid the hell that is the London Underground and travel relatively cheaply – an adult one-day bus pass is £3.50, with under-11s travelling free (11-15-year-olds travel free with an Oyster photocard).
After stopping at a supermarket, we met some friends in the park and spent a couple of hours picniking in the sun as the famous St James’s pelicans glided by (at 2.30pm every day you can watch them being fed, and take a guided tour of Duck Island). Then the boys let off some steam in what used to be one of their favourite playgrounds towards the Buckingham Palace end of the park, with giant wooden snails and other imaginative features. We had a look at the palace, too, and talked about what the queen could possibly do with so many rooms, before strolling over to Wellington Barracks, where the boys watched through the fence as some of the Foot Guards based there were put through their paces, complete with bearskins, drums and – the boys’ delight – swords. It was a great free spectacle – pure London tourist fodder; had we wanted to go inside and find out more, the Guards Museum is just £3, or free to under-16s.
But the heavens opened, and having promised the boys one trip in a London cab during our stay I decided that this was the moment. Ten minutes later we were inside the National History Museum and en route to the object of our quest – the Mammals gallery and that famous blue whale. It was worth it: the boys were awestruck by its size, as they were by many of the items there – another favourite this time was the weighing machine that told you how you measure up against a polar bear, a blue whale and more. Finding out his relative smallness made Ethan resolve to ‘eat more cakes’. Although the National History Museum charges for some temporary exhibitions, the bulk of its vast collection are free, and that includes the Sealife Gallery, which we’d never explored before, and the Dinosaur Gallery with its ‘super-sensing’ animatronic T Rex. The queues for the latter are always shocking – at least two hours in the school holidays – and we were resigned to not being able to see it this time. But just as we were about to leave around 5pm we noticed that the queues had vanished, and heading into the gallery were able to see the beastie after a wait of just 10 minutes.
Then it was off on the bus to Baker Street, to a branch of the Italian chain Strada. A voucher allowing us two main courses for the price of one allowed the three of us to eat and drink well for little over £20.
Day 3: Feeling Free
Our last full day, and we kept up the hectic pace, bussing it first to glorious Somerset House, an 18th-century palace now home to four major art galleries but of more interest to kids for its beautiful courtyard filled with fountains that they are free to run through. We’d have come for these alone, but today happened to be the first day of its annual Free Time family festival, which lures kids from all over the capital for four days of themed activities. Unfortunately, the event has been the victim of its own success and gets wildly busy, which makes it stressful for those with tots. However, we found that if you go when it opens, you can enjoy a good hour of two’s frolics before having to beat a retreat.
By 2pm the sun was beating down and having stocked up on some picnic goodies from Pret a Manger we headed for Covent Garden and the newly revamped London Transport Museum. Although the LTM isn’t cheap, at £10 for an adult, it is free to under-16s, so it works out reasonably if there’s just one adult.
We retreated, finally, to Wagamama for another inexpensive and reliably popular family tea of tasty noodles, dumplings and healthy juices.
Day 4: Park Life
The days had sped by, and we’d only skimmed the surface of London. But before catching our train home at 4pm, the kids were eager to return to the Diana, Princess of Wales’ Memorial Playground in Kensington Gardens. This amazing park was designed around a Peter Pan theme in reference to the fact that a previous playground on the site was funded by JM Barrie, who walked in the gardens every day and set part of his most famous work there. Like Coram’s Fields, it’s open only to adults accompanying children and is free to enter. Kids could happily spend a whole day here, clambering over and into the pirate ship, hiding out the teepees, splashing through the beach cove and more. And because it was the holidays, we caught a free puppet show too (leaflets ‘What’s On in the Parks’ can be picked up throughout the parks). Only on leaving the playground did I have to put my hand in my pocket, when the boys spotted a traditional carousel.
Click here for listings of free events in the capital, see especially the Family section.
The Damage: 3 Nights/4 Days = £347
Travelodge, 3 nights in a family room @ £49/night - £147
Three adult one-day bus passes @ £3.50 each - £10.50
Medium lattes to keep Mum on the ball, 3 at £2.50 each - £7.50
Giraffe meal - £35
Strada meal - £22
Wagamama meal - £30
Shopping for two picnics - £23
Taxi fare - £10
Groceries/toiletries - £40
Stickerbook, Dinosaur Top Trumps and two postcards at NHM giftshop - £9
Fairground rides at Hyde Park - £3
Entry to London Transport Museum - £10
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