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East Lothian, located east of Edinburgh will be hosting the 8th annual Food & Drink Festival from 26 - 28 September 2008. Various events are being held to showcase the quality.local produce.

Haddington, East Lothian

The weekend kicks off with a Ceilidh with supper a the Glenkinchie Distillery on the evening of 26 September. On the morning of the 27 September there are cookery demonstrations at the Farmers Market in Haddington. The Slow Food Summer Fair is in North Berwick on 28 September from 11.30 - 15.30.

North Berwick harbour

There a couple of events for kids. On 27 September it’s Kids Food Fun Day at North Berwick from 11.30 - 15.30 and the “Kids in the Kitchen” is part of the Royal Scots Family Day at Musselburgh racecourse on 28 September.

Visit Bristol have a “Summer Specials” section in their website with details of hotel offers and discounted attractions tickets. There is also information about festivals and events such as the Bristol Harbour Festival and the Festival of the Tree. I liked the suggestion of a canoe safari to see the wildlife at close quarters at the Slimbridge Wetland Centre. located between Bristol and Gloucester.

Bristol Harbour

I stayed in Bristol in a family room at the Youth Hostel a converted warehouse for a few days with one of our sons a few years ago. The Youth Hostel was in a very central location close to the harbour.

Clifton Suspension Bridge, Bristol

I really liked Bristol, we enjoyed walking around the parks, the harbour and Clifton Bridge. However don’t take your car to Bristol, there’s a congested one way system and it’s expensive to park. Have you visited Bristol, what did you most enjoy about your visit?

Kids up to the age of 15 get to experience the Swedish Lappland for free. A new deal from the Kiruna Tourist Office for this summer offers a special option for families with children. And because this is Sweden, the word “family” is very loosely defined as “children accompanied by an adult guardian”.

So what’s in this deal?
For starters, room and board for kids under 15 is free. And the following attractions offer free activities for children:

• Abisko Mountain Station
• Björkliden Fjällby
• Camp Ripan
• Riksgränsen
• Icehotel in Jukkasjärvi (yes, they do have a ton of stuff to do during the summer months as well!)

Plus, both tourist offices in Kiruna and Narvik (yes, Narvik’s in Norway, and I’d say, anything in Norway they offer for free is a good thing, considering local prices) have special summer activities for kids, too. In Kiruna that includes the Esrange Space Center, where Richard Branson plans to launch his Virgin Galactic, and the LKAB Iron Mine. (I love the mine, by the way! Been there several times.)

Just look for the “Barn Fri Entre” (or its English equivalent) icon on participating websites, or contact the Kiruna Tourist Office for help. They haven’t done a great job of promoting this offer and are somewhat disappointed with the response so far. So if Sweden is in your travel plans this summer, take the kids and go North! It’s well worth it! Incidentally, Lappland is also my favorite part of Scandinavia. Though midnight sun season is already over (it ended in Kiruna on July 18th), the nights are still white and the weather very agreeable. I’m heading there myself in two weeks!

The deal is valid until the end of August, and SAS (Scandinavian Airlines) even offer free flights to Kiruna for kids under 15 from any Swedish getaway.

Torne River in the village of Lovikka (yes, that’s the village where Lovikka mittens come from).
Photo by Anna Etmanska

PS. In Swedish “Lappland” is spelled with two “p”, so in order to make your google searches easier, I kept the Swedish spelling here.

You can save on admission fees to UK attractions on the Daysout.co.uk site. Many attractions are offering discounts such as Legoland Windsor, Thames City Cruises, Camelot Theme Park, Shakespeare’s House & Garden, Scone Palace, Colcester Zoo and Wookey Hole.

Wookey Hole by repairman

However you have to pay a £5 fee to download up to five discount vouchers or £10 for unlimited voucher download. You can check out each attraction on the site how much you’ll save, it varies from from around £3 to £30 depending on the attraction and the number of visitors.

But you’ll be eligible to receive 5 discount vouchers, free of charge. if you book any room online at Travelodge between 10 July - 3 August 2008, With family rooms starting from £19 a night, if you book at least 3 weeks in advance and pay upfront. you could have a great family budget break.

If you are flying with kids you should look carefully at the total cost of your flight. Airlines policies of charges for children vary a lot and you need to work out the true total cost to find the best deal for your family. APH have investigated the infant and child charges and policies of 10 airlines flying from the UK. They looked at categories such as charges for transportation of buggies and car seats, luggage allowances, provision of kids meals and entertainment.

It is worth while spending some time doing research e.g. an infant under 2 is charged 10% of the flight cost with British Airways but kids under 12 years of age are charged 60-80% of the adult fare, with Easyjet an infant is charged £20 for a ticket but a child aged two and over has to pay the full fare. So get out the calculator especially if you have more than one child to see which airline will have the lowest total cost.

If there’s one thing that always being highlighted to me, it’s that you do have to be prepared to do some research and comparison to find the best deal for you in travel. It’s not only about cost it’s also about convenience, e.g. are you prepared to travel 3 - 4 hours to an airport where offers a cheaper flight if that’s going to double your overall journey time from home to your destinations or entail paying for an overnight stay close to the hotel?

Photo - Plane Wreck by berbercarpet

I came across this article about quirkly Easter events in UK with themes such egg jarping, hare pie scramble and coal carrying. So if you’re looking for something a bit different to rolling your egg down a grassy bank you now have some inspiration.

Easter Egg Mosaic by annapi_78

The Easter weekend in the UK is very early this year, the 21 - 24 March 2008. The clocks don’t even go forward to Summer Time until the following weekend.

What are your plans for Easter? Some hotels do have good deals over the Easter weekend. I had a quick look at Laterooms to see what was on offer in the UK.

I’ve spent quite a bit of time recently on the UK National Rail site doing research about finding the lowest train fares. I noticied a link to the Trakkies website for train lovings kids. The site has 2 areas, one for 5- 7 year olds and another for 8 - 12 year olds. Kids can play games, download activities for their next train journey, find out about railway history and do quizzes.

It reminds me of when our sons were young and bit rail fans. I remember hanging around in the cold at our local train station so they could do a bit of train spotting and wave at the train drivers and sitting in the car parked near level crossings.

Kids under 15 go free on Legoland holidays , on the basis of one free child per paying adult, on these selected dates throughout 2008.

March: 15-20, 25-31.
April : 1-4, 21, 24-28.
May: 1-2, 8-12, 15-19, 22-23.
June: 2-30.
July: 1-23.
September: 8, 11-15, 18-22, 25-29.
October: 2-6, 9-13, 16-20, 23-24.

Legoland Holidays offer a best price guarantee so you can be sure you’re getting the best deal for your family break.

The park opens from 15 March - 2 November 2008. Legoland, in Windsor, was voted the best UK attraction for children 2007 in the Group Leisure Awards. There are 9 different areas in the park, each with its own theme including the new “Land of the Vikings”, “Knights Kingdom” and “Duploland” for younger kids.

Pontins have been offering seaside family holidays in the UK since the company was founded by Fred Pontin in 1946. They have seven holiday centres in the UK. Blackpool and Pakefield in Suffolk offer half board holidays. The five other centres, Prestatyn Sands in North Wales, Brean Sands in Somerset, Southport, Helmsley in Norfolk and Camber Sands in Sussex, have self catering accommodation.

The website has information about each of the holiday centres, such as accommodation options with floor plans of the apartments, centre facilities, activities and nearby attractions for days out.

Pontins have some great deals on UK breaks with half price offers on self catering holidays. There are also free child places available on selected dates on half board holidays. You can claim a free two night Euro 2008 break between 2 - 29 June if you book any Summer holiday or short break. However be aware that you have to pay a £30 booking fee for the Euro short break but you will receive £30 of Pontins voucher when you check in. If you book a Schools Out or Summer break you qualify for half price festive breaks. You must book before the end of February 2008 to be eligible for the offers.

I carried out several searches on the site and there was good availability for half price holidays. You can only carry out a search by holiday centre, month and length of stay. I’d have liked to see a date specific search where you could search several different holiday centres simultaneously, so you could easily compare prices at the various centres.

I was pretty irked when I clicked on the “50 Free Activities” bar in the left margin and every activity which came up on page one was subject to an additional charge. This is misleading for potential guests. I think most people realise that activities such as go-karting and quad bikes will be subject to a charge but why list them in free activities? Better to have two categories, one for free activities and one for charged activities. A fair number of activities are free such as indoor swimming pool, table tennis, cabaret shows, play station area, indoor soft play areas. You need to check the availability of activities at each holiday centre.

I do think that Pontins offer good value for UK holiday breaks. Their website is fairly easy to use, although the addition of a general site search box and a more flexible holiday date search facility would be useful.

Disneyland Paris is the 4th most visited theme park in the world with over 10 million visitors a year. Not bad for a a theme park that got off to a pretty shaky start on the verge of bankruptcy in 1994 before a change a name from Euro Disney to Disneyland Paris and a debt restructure heralded better times.