Tips for Successful Family Adventures

Family Adventures is a practical guide to involving babies and children in all sorts of adventures, whether it be cycling, camping, paddling, hiking, swimming or outdoor holidays.

As soon as Bex Band, founder of the UK’s largest women’s adventure community, Love Her Wild, announced she was pregnant with her first child, the sympathy began. ‘Enjoy your adventures while you can’, ‘It’s going to be a big shock not being able to travel as much’, and ‘Aren’t you going to miss adventuring?’It seemed as though having children was a death sentence when you’re an outdoor adventurer.

But it really doesn’t have to be that way. Yes, it’s a scary prospect – how do you keep them safe? Where do they sleep? What equipment do you need? – but it’s totally doable.

This guide is full of useful information (such as what to pack when camping with an infant or how to keep children safe in open water), invaluable tips (family games you can play around a campfire or how to keep morale up in bad weather) and plenty of honesty around things going wrong (poo-explosion on a wild camp, anyone?). Experiences from adventuring families also provide a plethora of insights so that you’re well equipped to make your family adventuring dreams a reality.

Here, Bex Band offers some tips for successful family adventures:

Adventuring with children is very different from when you are managing a trip with just adults. Packing, logistics, managing distances and food intake – it’s all different. It took us a while to get the balance right and to realise where the struggles would come from and what to let go of.

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Extract: The Rising Down: Lives in a Sussex Landscape by Alexandra Harris

When the celebrated critic and cultural historian Alexandra Harris returned to her childhood home of West Sussex, she realised that she barely knew the place at all.

As she probed beneath the surface, excavating layers of archival records and everyday objects – bringing a lifetime’s reading to bear on the place where she started – hundreds of unexpected stories and hypnotic voices emerged from the area’s past. Who has stood here, she asks; what did they see?

From the painter John Constable and the modernist writer Ford Madox Ford to the lost local women who left little trace, these electrifying encounters – spanning the Downs, Poland, Australia, Canada – inspired her to imagine lives that seemed distant, yet were deeply connected through their shared landscape.

By focusing on one small patch of England, Harris finds ‘a World in a Grain of Sand’ and opens vast new horizons.

Here is an extract:

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Children’s Book of the Month: The Royal Jewel Plot by A.M. Howell

Our Children’s Book of the Month for April is The Royal Jewel Plot from award-winning author A.M. Howell.

Alice and Sonny investigate a stolen jewel, in this instalment of the bestselling Mysteries at Sea series.

Alice and Sonny are excited for their summer trip, sailing on the luxurious yacht the Lady Rose. They’re even more excited when they find out the King of England is going to be on board too.

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10 Recommendations for National Walking Day

Happy National Walking Day. Today is the perfect day to plan your next walking adventure and we have some great products to help you on your way:

Ordnance Survey Explorer Maps

from £12.99

The Explorer series, Ordnance Survey’s most detailed maps recommended for anyone enjoying outdoor activities, provides topographic coverage of Great Britain at 1:25,000 on GPS compatible maps with hiking trails, cycling routes and extensive tourist information. Each printed map is available either on paper or as a waterproof and tear-resistant OS Active Map, as indicated in its title. Britain’s National Parks and other areas of particular tourist interest are presented on often double-sided OL (Outdoor Leisure) maps, whilst most standard format Explorers cover an area of 30 x 20km (approx. 19 x 12 miles).

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Map of the Month: The Lakes 100

Our Map of the Month for April is The Lakes 100 Map . The Lakes 100 is a circular journey uniquely tailored for you to get the most out of the Lake District and beyond. There are over 150 miles to explore with boundless gems to discover along the way that will quench any thirsty adventurous soul.

Being a family run business ourselves, we love hearing about other family run enterprises. The team behind the Lakes 100 are Cumbrian brothers Peter and Aaron who came up with the idea for this road trip. They initially did the road trip together with a group of friends so they could share the experience and get some feedback. Now you can follow the trip yourself with their map.

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Book of the Month: Taking the Risk by Hilary Bradt

Our Book of the Month for April 2024 is Taking the Risk: My Adventures in Travel and Publishing by founder of Bradt Guides, former recipient of the Edward Stanford Award for Outstanding Contribution to Travel Writing and friend of Stanfords, Hilary Bradt.

Hilary Bradt signing copies of Taking the Risk

In Taking the Risk Hilary Bradt looks back on 50 years of escapades, surprises, mishaps, disasters… and success. From her first solo trip aged three (on a British beach), she revisits six decades of hitchhiking, feeding the travel habit by working abroad, and starting a successful travel publishing company where knowing nothing proved a surprising asset. 

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Stanfords Event: Wayfarer by Phoebe Smith

Last night we celebrated the launch of adventurer Phoebe Smith’s new book Wayfarer. Phoebe was interviewed by editor and travel writer Meera Dattani in front of a packed out audience.

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The Covenant of Water, Winner of the Viking Fiction with a Sense of Place Award

Last week at the Edward Stanford Travel Writing Awards The Covenant of Water by Abraham Verghese won the Viking Fiction with a Sense of Place Award.

Such is the nature of our business, it’s no surprise that often the winning authors are travelling or not based in London so are unable to attend the event. Luckily Abraham’s globe trophy was accepted on behalf of him by his publisher, but he did send these words;

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Stanfords Best-Selling Travel Guide

It certainly says a lot about travel trends that our number one best-selling travel guide for 2003/2004 is all about rail travel.

In fact, quite a few rail books were present in our top 30, but for now let’s looks at the one taking the number one slot:

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Around the World in 6 Works of New Fiction 

Let us take you on a reading journey to Panama, Vietnam, the Caribbean, Myanmar (Burma), Georgia and Italy via the pages of some new fiction on our shelves.   

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