Foxhills: family-friendly hotel review

 

Thanks to this blog and to my day job (as a journalist at the Evening Standard, where I sometimes write travel pieces amongst other topics!), my family and I have been lucky enough to visit a lot of Britain's family-friendly hotels. We've loved the Four Seasons, Coworth Park, Calcot Manor amongst others.

But we're just back from a stay at a hotel we'd not previously heard around luxe parenting hotel chat - and it was incredible - and cost a lot less than the others on this list. So we really recommend you book a trip to Foxhills - here's why:

Family car review: Peugeot 5008 SUV

 This is the least car-y car review you'll ever read. I don't know what a carburetor does (and spelling it wasn't easy either). I could more easily change a nappy whilst blindfolded, and handcuffed, than change a wheel. When the mechanic starts talking at the end of an MOT, I zone out at the gobbledygook and focus on hoping the final price isn't too high.

But this is a parent's car review of Peugeot's new SUV (aka Mum-Mobile) - from a mum with limited car knowledge, but with a ton of honest feedback after a week driving this seven-seater, ramming it with luggage, squeezing it into parking places to the backdrop of one screaming babe and one shouting toddler, driving it for hours on the motorway, fitting and unfitting it with car seats, and - spoiler alert - falling in love with this car. Here's why... 

In The Night Garden Live: a review

I have to confess I didn't have sky-high expectations before I sat in the velvet seats of the Hackney Empire to watch In The Night Garden Live. A kids' TV show (albeit one of the most popular on TV, and definitely one of tiniest man's favourites) would be jazzed up a little bit for the theatre, I reckoned, with those dum dum, dum dum dum dum duuuuum dum starting notes on repeat throughout. Nothing too exciting. My eldest's first theatre trip was to see The Tiger Who Came To Tea; I didn't have such high hopes for the plot of ITNG. 

But then the curtain lifted. The familiar tune played (and yes, it's been an ear-worm in my head ever since). And tiny man gasped. He really did. Then he waved wildly and squealed "IT'S IGGLE PIGGLE!!" (Noise doesn't matter, most of the rest of the tot audience were gasping too). 

Then there were beautiful, full-size puppets (with costumes made by the star behind the London 2012 opening and closing ceremony - seriously!) and excellent puppeteers, Avenue Q-style; there were dancing characters, plus there was a plot that had my four-year-old captivated, whilst my two-year-old just kept beaming.