Travel with Kids: New Footprint Guide
Added to website: 19 November 2007
By: William Gray
“Take your kids travelling! Take them now! Children grow up fast and you’ll never find a better, more rewarding opportunity to enrich their lives, minds and souls – or yours – than during a family holiday. From bucket-and-spade to epic escapade, family holidays create memories that will live with you long after your children have grown up. They provide quality time away from the rush and stress of everyday life; they are precious, hard-earned and over all-too-quickly.”
The new TRAVEL WITH KIDS guide (Footprint, £19.99) shows you how to get family holidays right – before it’s too late and your children want to go on their own. The first definitive worldwide guide to family travel, it is packed with 400 pages of inspiration, advice and ideas for taking your children anywhere from Cornwall to Cambodia, Alaska to Zambia.
Filled with essential information and stunning photographs, TRAVEL WITH KIDS provides all the expert advice you need to start planning unforgettable family holidays, from picking the perfect Caribbean Island or Alpine ski resort, to planning a malaria-free safari; from trekking safely in the Himalayas to finding the best fossil beaches in Dorset… and literally thousands of other tips and suggestions.
Footprint‘s new guide is not only designed to be used by parents seeking inspiration and guidance on where to go on holiday – it is also aimed at those who spent their youth backpacking the globe and are adamant the holiday experience should not be curtailed just because they have children. Award-winning travel writer, photographer and TV presenter (and dad), William Gray, has spent the last 10 years researching child-friendly holiday destinations. He and his wife refused to accept that having children meant they would have to shred their passports, so they set about researching locations all over the world – along with twins Joseph and Eleanor - who were able to provide their parents with the all-important child perspective.
According to Will, “Life is so busy nowadays, with both parents often working, that the family holiday is the one time in the year you can spend quality time with your kids. Travelling with kids is about sharing and bonding as a family unit. It’s the immeasurable pleasure and satisfaction of showing your children just how amazing the world is and of seeing their faces light up at things you might otherwise have taken for granted. Family holidays allow you to take stock of life and appreciate what’s really important.”
The book covers Britain and Ireland, France, Spain and Portugal, Italy, Central Europe, Eastern Europe, Greece and Turkey, Scandinavia, Africa, Asia, Australasia, North America and Latin America. Each of these country or regional chapters takes a detailed look at the family-holiday potential of key locations, including inspiring features such as Kids’ top 10 (must-dos seen from a youngster’s perspective), quirky facts and family holiday highlights. There’s also a Kids’ stuff section, packed with ideas, resources and activities to get children interested in each destination, and Tots to teens, which provides a holiday planner for various age groups, from babies and toddlers to school-age children and teenagers, as well as information for single parent families and those with children with special needs. Each chapter is rounded off with Grown-ups’ stuff - essential information on travel nitty-gritty, including when to go, how to get there and what to eat. Throughout the book, you will also find a wealth of personal anecdotes, from grown-ups and children, including celebrity parents like David Gower and Steve Redgrave.
The first part of the guide deals with essential planning advice such as what to pack, how to get around, boredom busters for long journeys, how to save money and how to stay safe and healthy. A series of ‘10 best holidays’ spreads turns the spotlight on everything from world wonders and seeing endangered wildlife to keeping teacher happy and hard-to-please teenagers. Andy Riddle of Footprint comments: “Every parent will tell you that travelling with children presents its fair share of challenges but clearly it provides an opportunity for children to see new places, meet new people and have new experiences. TRAVEL WITH KIDS is packed with inspirational ideas and practical travel information, and is aimed at people who are looking to make the most of what is quite rightly considered an important time in the family diary.”
“William’s attention to detail is quite staggering, and he has produced a book that will make many like-minded parents the world over realise the world is their oyster and that they don’t have to settle for so-called ‘safe’ holidays. Put simply, William’s book manages to provide the answer to the annual question: “Where shall we take the kids on holiday this year?”
TRAVEL WITH KIDS is available from all good book shops and online at www.footprintbooks.com from November 2007.
For further information or to interview the author, please contact Graeme Jackson at the Footprint press office on 0117 9064518 or gjackson@brayleino.co.uk
Notes to the Authors:
- William Gray is an award-winning travel writer and photographer, who is the family travel columnist for Wanderlust magazine. He has presented on BBC’s Holiday programme as well as regularly contributing to The Sunday Times and The Sunday Telegraph
- William has authored and supplied photography to several guidebooks, and is the editor of Kenya Airways’ Msafiri magazine. He is also patron of Coral Cay Conservation.
- Researching ‘Travel with Kids’ saw William’s children Joseph and Eleanor tot up more than 350 hours flying time, investigate the electrical hazards of more than 50 hotel rooms, throw up in six different car seats, trek through the Atlas Mountains, kayak in New Zealand and make fire with the Bushmen of eastern Namibia.
- William is a member of the British Guild of Travel Writers and collected the coveted Association of Independent Tour Operators (AITO) Travel Writer of the Year award in 2002
Footprint Books
- At forefront of travel literature for over 80 years, leading and innovating
- South American handbook is the flagship title with 82 annual editions, longest established travel guide in the English language
- Footprint has recently developed a new and exciting range of lifestyle guides that fuse travel information with an activity – current titles include Body & Soul Escapes, Surfing Europe, Surfing the World, European City Breaks, Diving the World, Snowboarding the World and the Wine Travel Guide to the World.
- For further information on all titles visit www.footprintbooks.com
