Unusual family friendly holidays

Pile the activities onto your plate with a week in an adventure playground like Montenegro, Croatia, Spain or the Azores. You could find yourself kayaking on mirror-smooth lakes, canyoning down madly steep mountain gorges and snorkelling in turquoise seas. We have activity holidays for younger children where you can wild swim and learn to dance, and high-octane activity holidays for older children, featuring sandboarding and surfing. Our multi activity family holidays beat a bland hotel buffet hands down, but like a buffet, there’s something for everyone.

You don’t need to go long haul to see an amazing country that’s very different from your home. For kids, that first trip somewhere totally different can be a game changer. We think Morocco – a four-hour flight from London – is a cultural showstopper. Easy to get around on tour, your trip can combine desert, mountain, souk and seaside. Then again, why not try Finnish Lapland, where in winter you can experience a world away from anything familiar: temperatures of -20°C, metres of snow, skies lit up by Northern Lights – and, warm and snug in your snow gear – not just experience but embrace this winter wonderland together. Further afield there are orangutan rainforest encounters in Borneo, snorkelling expeditions in Belize, lemurs in Madagascar: a whole world out there to turn into family memories.

Unusual holidays have no age limit, whether you’re just looking for some quirky accommodation somewhere sunny (with solar panels and local produce from the garden), or the perfect place to impress your teenagers. Young families can do their first ever kayaking trip, learn to swim together, or have their first amazing wild animal encounter. Older children might enjoy thrills and spills on dunes, in waves, or down canyons, with our more active trips. Multi generational families might enjoy our centre based trips, where all ages and abilities can be catered to in their varied programmes.

We think our volunteering trips are wonderful but even more wonderful is how popular they are with families. On these trips you’re not just helping others, but you’re also escape your norms, changing up your family dynamics by learning something together, and all mucking in together. Our volunteering trips for families might see you helping with marine conservation, animal welfare or wildlife conservation. Even small children can help with big animals – think helping with orphan bears at sanctuaries in Romania or cutting up mountains of fruit to feed elephants in Sri Lanka. Stay hosted by a local community, meet scientists and conservationists from all around the world, and perhaps, at the end of an inspirational trip, you’ll find that you’re raising future conservation champions of your own.