- The Journey
- The Hotel
- The Fun
London, the Big Smoke, our Nation’s Capital. An outpost too far for many a Northern soul. Too big, too noisy, too crowded, and too…well…far! But not for this intrepid troop, deciding it would be a perfect Easter school holiday getaway, our first as a family of five.
TRAVEL
We can reach London by train in a little under three hours, and that’s direct from our village, so it is very convenient. However, at the risk of preaching to the choir, travelling with a baby, a 2 year old, a 6 year old, and all of the baggage, prams, supplies, etc, that entails, is a challenge regardless.
Planning is the key, “always plan ahead. It wasn’t raining when Noah built the Ark.” (Richard Cushing). Our days of spontaneous ‘grab your bags and go travelling‘, are long gone. Everything must be meticulously planned with children, and even then, where rail travel in the UK is concerned, there’s a lot of hoping and praying that <insert privatised rail company name here> don’t come along and scupper said plans. Fortunately for us, there was no such scuppering on this occasion and our train departed and arrived on time.
If you are using the railways to get about the UK with kids then an absolute must have is a Family & Friends Railcard. They cost £30 for a year, but even if you only plan to use it for one trip you could still save money overall on the full fare price.
The railcard is for kids aged 5-15, however, even if your kids are younger it may still work out cheaper to buy them a ticket using the railcard than it would for them to travel for free with two full paying adults. Something to consider
I’ve always had an affinity for London, the history and the pomp and circumstance of the place. I’ve always thought of it as being really easy to get around, you find an underground station, of which you’re never too far away from, tap your card, hop on and away you go, resurfacing a short while later in an entirely different part of town, bleeding marvellous!
However, when you are pushing a double pram around you soon realise how Victorian it all is and how they have struggled, retrospectively, to make all of the stations accessible. In fact, of the near 300 functional stations, less than 100 of them have step free access. If you look closer at this, most of those that do are in the outer zones, the number in Central London is much lower, less than ten in fact are either on or inside of the Circle Line perimeter.
In spite of that, and having had to deal with broken down lifts at one of the stations, relying on the good will of the general public to help lift the pram up and down stairs, we arrived at our base.
HOTEL
For this trip we chose the Premier Inn at Paddington Basin, and the price was cheap, comparatively speaking, costing us £568.50 for 4 nights, so around 140 quid a night, not bad at all for London.
The hotel was opened in 2022 and has a modern feel. Generally, you know what you are going to get with a Premier Inn, nothing fancy but budget friendly accommodation done well. Their family rooms, generally speaking, accommodate a family of four. However, if you have an extra child who is 2 or under, as we did, then they fit five in a room with a travel cot provided for the baby/infant.
If you have a young family, kids who don’t have to duck to move through doorways, or ones with go-go-gadget arms and legs, then these rooms are just the job, ample enough space for everyone. If you have older kids, teens, etc, then you would probably be better looking at an alternative or for connecting rooms.
Food wise, the hotel has a Bar & Block Steakhouse which is overlooked from the mezzanine reception area. It was popular, too popular in fact that we were unable to get an evening reservation on the day we arrived. For the other days we had planned places to eat out so we never got a chance to try it in the evening, but we did head down for the trusty Premier Inn open buffet breakfast every day and that was very much as expected.
For this trip to the Capital we had planned to fit a lot in and the location of this hotel, a short walk from Paddington Station was a perfect base.
- Day 1 was arrival, find our bearings and see some sights
- Day 2 was Legoland at Windsor
- Day 3, Madame Tussauds in the morning & the London Eye in the afternoon
- Day 4 was a trip to Hyde Park, including the Diana Memorial Playground
- Day 5, heading back home