This feature from the blog 501 Places, about how different sorts of travellers approach new places, made me laugh and cringe at the same time.

I’m ashamed to say that I’m a Military General, with everything planned out in the finest detail. On our latest trip to Amsterdam, I printed out a map and marked each hotel, restaurant and sight that we were to visit, then I worked out how we were going to get to each one. With two young boys and a toddler in tow, I wasn’t leaving anything to chance.  

It wasn’t always so. In days of yore, I was very much the fearless wanderer, leaping onto trans-continental trains at whim, barely glancing at guidebooks before arriving in a destination, getting to town late at night without pre-booked accommodation or sometimes even the faintest idea of where to stay,… It was mad and glorious, and I took it all for granted. It’s only now that I appreciate the intoxicating hedonism of those freewheeling days.

Of course, when you’re responsible only for yourself, it doesn’t matter if you screw up and end up spending the night on a bench in the bus station or dining on the last stale croissant left in the shop. The scrapes you inevitably get into are all part of the romance of travel. With kids, finding yourself without a hotel room or discovering that every restaurant in town has closed for the night or that there’s nowhere to get nappies and milk, is no laughing matter.

On the other hand, I don’t want to turn into a travel fascist who reduces each holiday to a series of boxes that have to be ticked. There has to be room for the spontaneous – it’s often the unplanned, most random experiences that form our most lasting and precious of memories. Part of the problem is that I’m a travel writer as well as a travelling parent, which means that I generally approach a destination with a specific agenda and have a certain number of places that I have to visit and review. This can make for a certain rigidity.

Happily, then, there’s must be a little of the Useless Planner in me too. I draw up lists, make dots on maps, and construct schedules, only for them to crumble in the face of intractable reality. The toddler doesn’t nap when he should, or the boys are hungry earlier than expected or don’t fancy pancakes, or somebody throws up, or we get lost, or the weather lets us down. Or a combination of the aforementioned. And that’s when the real holiday starts – when we’re forced to wing it, and in doing so, open ourselves up to the chance events and encounters that are what travel is really all about.

What about you? What sort of a family explorer are you?