Vacation 2009: children happy¶

Tags: personal, cycling

We have two kids, aged 5 and 7. Essential on a holiday: keep them happy and engaged. I don’t want them to start dreading the kind of holidays we enjoy and to start clamoring for an - according to our preferences - dreadful holiday baking on some touristy beach in a high profile beach resort.

We succeeded! They both enjoyed cycling and camping and …

• Rianne got two big cycling bags for her birthday to replace the two smaller ones she used the year before. Wow, that was a real message of faith delivered to her: you can do it, you can cycle with such a heap of luggage! She actually requested more luggage during the holiday. She could take on more!

• Having a speed meter on the kids’ bikes helps. Wow, I’m going 18km/h with luggage! You can cleanly measure how good you are.

• Swimming. To keep our children happy, you need to swim. So I took special care when planning our route beforehand to check for possible swimming spots. Out of 8 campings, 4 had a swimming lake nearby. Well, one had the river Vecht nearby. You freeze to death, but you freeze while swimming so that’s OK.

• Having a clearly visible goal helps. You have that river that you’re following till the origin. So you see the river get ever narrower. Until, at the very end, you can rejoice at a small pool of water where the river starts.