On a particularly packed train, bloodshed may ensue.Posh hotelsDon’t bother. Four-poster beds stand little chance if consistently bounced on by small children, who will need no excuse to unwrap and eat the complimentary toiletries. Watch out, too, if they get into the tennis courts: they’re quite capable of getting tangled up in them.But at least posh hotels expect a certain level of destruction Certain b&bs may be less accommodating. Psychiatrists would tell you that flying to Florida with two young children is literally insane – unless you are willing to drug them into a coma for the duration of the flight, as a remarkable number of parents now are.Train journeys are a little easier: three hours is the upper limit.

But if the train in front breaks down, and your journey is extended by five hours, and there’s no hot food on board because it’s a Sunday – as happened to me recently on First Great Western – then your children’s already limited capacity for stoic endurance will soon be eroded. Plane rides, as ours call them, are initially more entertaining for reasons of novelty, and there’s always fun to be had changing a nappy within olfactory range of the pompous middle-aged men sitting in Suit Class But long haul is unspeakable. The following, therefore, are mostly the fruits of experience – mouldy, dried-out old fruits that are beginning to stink out the fridge.Long journeysObviously to be avoided at all costs. No small child can tolerate any journey of more than two hours by car or plane. When we drive from London to Devon to visit friends there, we either drive at night, which feels a little like walking a tightrope without a safety net, or we go during the boy’s nap in late morning, which might give us two hours’ grace. Our daughter is older and does not nap, so must be continuously bribed with sweetmeats, starting healthily (bananas, organic nut’n'gravel bars) and descending into the fiery hell of damnation that is the family pack of Skittles. “There’s only going somewhere different to be exhausted in.” Wise words And she’s only got one We’ve got two.

You remember when you
were single, and you used to come back from a holiday saying you needed another holiday to recover? With small children you need another holiday to recover from the holiday you need to recover from the actual holiday. Fortunately, my eye bags are now so huge they can take some of the vast quantities of extra luggage we always have to take.There are lessons we can learn from this. I have to admit that I have learned most of them the hard way. Travelling in a hired car for seven straight hours with a 15-month-old strapped into a car seat teaches you much about the meaning of the word “purgatory”. There are only so many times you can sing “The big ship sails on the alley-alley-oh”. “There’s no such thing as a holiday when you have young children,” a friend of mine warned me.

You remember when you

“There’s no such thing as a holiday when you have young children,” a friend of mine warned me. Children aged six-14 years pay £430 if sharing their parents’ room, or £645 each for their own room. The hotel is offering full-board accommodation from 24-27 December, including a canap?eception on Christmas Eve, carols, midnight Mass, mulled wine and chestnuts and a visit from Father Christmas. Children under 12 sharing their parents’ room pay £225 or, if two children share their own room, it’s £330 per child.£599…Make a last-minute dash for the Med with Neilson (0870- 33 33 358). It still has limited availability at its activity centre, The Retreat in Sivota, Greece, for departures on 24 October. The Woolacombe Bay Hotel (01271 870388; ) on the north Devon coast is offering a Christmas package.