Trying to find more family time together by limiting your mobile phone usage is a good thing, and experts increasingly agree that it’s important to establish family ground rules for phone usage. Family tech expert Andy Robertson and Tesco Mobile’s new contract for mobile phone usage is designed to help families to set healthy limits, and it’s a great way to increase the amount of time you have to spend together.
So for those times when you do crave just a couple of hours of quality family time together, we’ve checked out the best things to do this autumn. From fundraising dog walks to finding food in the forest, and from hair-raising horror stories to mini-golf for mad professors, here are heaps of good reasons to stash those screens and quit the sofa.
Use your paws for a good cause
Time together as a family should include everyone – even the four-legged members. So dog-owning families looking to stretch their legs and keep the family mutt happy at the same time should check out a sponsored dog walk (or non-dog owners could always borrow one from BorrowMyDoggy). These happen all over the country, generally take less than two hours, and often you just have to pay to join the walk, raising money and spending time with fellow dog lovers while you’re at it. They include a Halloween-costumed dog walk around “haunted” London in October (organised by All Dogs Matter). Or why not check out dogjog.co.uk for autumn charity runs across the UK?
Go wild on two wheels
Getting from A to B by bike is one thing, but getting away from traffic and red lights is something else. Think bigger than your local parks – which often have restrictions on where cycling is allowed – and make it two hours of family fun to remember by checking out the National Trust’s website, where you can find wild cycle trails all over the country. There are routes through woodland, along bridleways and across fields – just choose the trail distance you think your family’s legs can manage.
Discover your inner artist
The Big Draw (thebigdraw.org) is an annual festival encouraging all ages and abilities to get creative. There are events all over the UK, including sessions for schools and small children, but there are also innovative workshops and artist-led events for older children and adults, many of which are free. Help create a junk sculpture in your local museum, show off your fashion design smarts or try landscape painting for the first time. You can search the website by postcode to find activities near you. More and more events will be posted as the festival, which runs from 1-31 October, gets closer.
Hunt out your dinner
You don’t have to be Bear Grylls to be a first-class forager. Woods all over the UK are full of fruit, berries and nuts you can root about for at this time of year, and knowing you’ve found it yourselves makes the eating so much more satisfying. Check out woodlandtrust.org.uk for what’s in season when.
Play trendy mini-golf
Is crazy golf your family’s guilty pleasure? Then discover its funky side. Junk Yard Golf Club designs eccentric, indoor mini-golf courses out of weird and wonderful props and garbage (locations in London, Manchester and Oxford, with Leeds coming soon). There’s also glow-in-the-dark putting at Globalls in Brighton, and at M&D’s theme park in Motherwell the Devil’s Island course takes you over water, across a sunken bridge and into a pirate’s galleon. Alternatively, if you fancy going boldly into Star Trek territory, the Adventures of Mr Mulligan is a chain of quirky mini-golf courses around the country, including Space Golf in Newcastle.
Take to the treetops
Thanks to outdoor adventure outfit Go Ape, treetop climbs and ziplining through woodland has become an experience you can do everywhere, from zone 1 London to castles in the Highlands. It’s also inspired a new breed of canopy crusaders offering ever more daring (but safe) challenges. These include Treetop Trek in Manchester – which includes negotiating swinging logs, “Indiana bridges” and no fewer than 24 zip lines – as well as Treetop Nets in the Lake District and Yorkshire, which has elevated tunnels and trampolines to bounce around on.
Spend a night at the museum
Fear not, this is a Ben Stiller-free zone. Museums at Night (25-27 October) is a showcase of galleries large and small across the country. Opening outside their usual daytime hours and presenting special one-off experiences, demonstrations and live shows for these three evenings only, participating venues get a chance to remind us that museums are vibrant and exciting places to be. Some sessions are adult-only, but you can search the site for events near you that suit your family’s ages, and more events are being added all the time.
Scare yourselves silly
Get yourselves in a spooky mood as Halloween looms (and pick up a few costume ideas along the way) this autumn, with some splendidly spine-chilling events at historic locations, including Muncaster Castle in Cumbria, Warwick Castle and Dover Castle. Or how about a City of the Dead tour in Edinburgh or a ghost walk around Hampton Court Palace? For over-12s there’s Terror Mountain – an immersive experience in a disused silver mine near Aberystwyth that’ll let you bond over being scared as a family – all in under two hours.
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