Top 10 reasons why travel with kids is easier by train
My younger daughter was just 6 weeks old when I made my first solo long-distance train with her and her 5yo sister. Many of my friends thought it was a crazy undertaking, and my dad even offered to drive down to London and pick us up, but to me it is obvious that train travel with kids is so much easier than car travel - and here’s why.
You can’t enjoy a sleepy cuddle like this in a car!
1) Toilets. Most trains going any distance have toilets. This is a godsend. You don’t need to worry about where the next service station is, or what happens if you are stuck in traffic when a little voice says ‘Mummy…I need a wee!’
2) Space to stretch legs. The train carries on whizzing you to your destination while you let your toddler potter up and down the aisle, and you can even pop to the buffet to buy a snack.
3) Train picnics. These are so good they deserve whole post of their own, but trust me, if you have never whizzed along at 100mph sitting round a table, with lovely scenery to look at, sharing a meal with your family then you really should. It’s one of life’s great simple pleasures.
4) Cost. Train travel can be expensive (although there are ways to make it cheaper!), but compared to the cost of running a car, insuring a car, maintaining a car, parking a car, filling a car with petrol…well, that makes those train tickets look a whole lot cheaper!
5) The relaxation. If you are driving then (so they tell me) leaning back in your seat and closing your eyes for a few moments is a really bad idea. But if you are on a train, and your children are engrossed in their books or their tablets, then you might get to do just that.
6) Travel (non) sickness. I’m not saying that children never get travel sick on a train, but it’s a lot less common than it is in cars. And, if the worst happens, it is a whole lot easier to clean up when you have instant access to a toilet cubicle and running water than it is when you are in sole charge of a moving vehicle.
7) Reading/watching. This is linked to the sickness point - a lot of people struggle to read or watch a film in a moving car, but most can do so perfectly happily by train. That means you are a lot less likely to hear the dreaded ‘I’m bored…’ whine on a train.
8) Booze! You can have a pint or glass of wine at lunch when you are out for a day trip by train, or even a sneaky gin-in-a-tin on the way home.
9) Ease of cuddles. When tiredness or grumpiness threatens to strike you can easily pull them onto your knee for a cuddle, a story and (hopefully), even a nap.
10) Kids love trains. They just do. Whether it is your toddler son who is obsessed with Thomas the Tank, or your tweenage daughter who been inspired by the Golden Age of train travel in Robin Stevens’ fantastic Murder Most Unladylike series set in the 1930s, train travel just has a certain pizazz that a journey in the family Ford Focus doesn’t.