Last Updated on 23 March 2025 by Colette
For years now, I’ve sat down at the start of January and written about our travel plans for the year. I’m someone who likes to plan ahead and whilst we don’t necessarily have everything booked and sorted in January, we do typically have a good idea of when we want to go away and where we might go. I was chatting to my best friend at the start of this week about how last year had sort of slipped through her fingers and that she’d ended up not taking a proper break from work in far longer than was good for her and we talked about the value in planning your year out ahead of time in that sense. Of course our year is already partially set out for us by things like school holidays or in the case of this year exams!
You can read about how we plan our family holidays here.
2024 turned out to be quite a busy year with multiple trips abroad for some of us, a family holiday in France, a couple of festivals and some camping weekends as well as two child free trips for Dave and I and a bonus trip to Conwy in October half term.
You can read a round up of our 2024 travels here.
So what have we got planned for 2025 so far?
Spring Sunshine
Dave and I are looking forward to a three night adventure at the start of March – this is a trip that is currently in the booking stages so until everything is confirmed I don’t want to say too much but fingers crossed for a long weekend away together to start our year off on the right foot!
May half term in France
After much debate, we decide we won’t be spending May half term in France this year.
We decided quite early on that with Ben taking his GCSEs this year, a long drive to the south of France for half term might not be such a good idea. We wavered a bit after enjoying last year’s holiday so much – especially as Ben had spent quite a bit of time away from the pool and out of the sun whilst he recovered from surgery which suggested perhaps he could do the same this year, revising in the morning and swimming in the afternoons.
In the end, we decided that for a number of reasons e.g. not being able to set off on the Thursday afternoon as we think he has an exam on Friday (more traffic and shorter holiday), the risk of getting stuck in France on the way home (tunnel issues etc) or just him being really tired from travelling etc that it would just be better to stick a pin in our French adventures for this year and perhaps plan a few nights away in Wales or similar.
As a bonus of not going to France, Dave and I have booked ourselves Live at Leeds tickets – we’ve wanted to go for a few years but we’re usually away!
Dubrovnik
In July we will be heading to Dubrovnik for a long weekend to celebrate my Dad’s birthday – when I say “we”, I mean Dave and I – the kids will be in school and Dave’s mum will be coming to take care of them.
Dad’s request for his birthday was a grown-ups trip like we did for Mum’s 60th when we surprised her by gate-crashing her weekend in Venice. There’s no surprises this time, he chose the destination and booked the accommodation himself but I’m totally open to recommendations of places to eat and things we need to do!
(We’ll likely be making use of Holafly’s esim for travelers now that roaming so so expensive!)
Camping trips
Despite intending to squeeze more camping trips into 2024 – we only managed two and both were in the school holidays. This was in part because we lost Dave for the second half of the holidays while he cared for his mum after surgery.
I’m hoping we’ll get some more camping trips in this summer; maybe some term time weekends or perhaps a sightly longer jaunt in the summer holidays again to make up for not taking the kids to France at half term!
If you’ve got campsites you love that you think we should try, I’m always open to recommendations.
Festivals!
Festivals are now a key part of our summer and something we plan our other adventures around. We’ve learned that it’s best to spread them out (consecutive festival weekends are exhausting) and two to three festivals is a good number for us.
As I’ve mentioned, Dave and I have tickets for Live at Leeds in May – we decided to do that one without the kids for a change. We currently have plans to make a return visit to Tramlines in July and Y Not Festival looks pretty epic again this year. I’m keeping an eye on the line up for Hardwick Festival in August as that was a highlight of last year. I could definitely be convinced by a return to The Big Feastival or maybe we’ll try something new this August!
September Sunshine
We are hopeful that we might manage to squeeze a child free holiday in September – but this depends very much on how our budgeting goes. We have agreed we’ll just make a decision on this one nearer the time as all we need is some sunshine and a pool for a few days so it doesn’t take too much planning!
So that’s where we’re up to so far – we don’t have any plans for February half term or Easter at the moment though they will likely be quite low-key with Ben’s exams on the horizon and October half term is currently plan free too.
Have you got anything booked in for this year or are you just at the planning stages?
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