Choo choo choo and off we go

We are now proud owners of a Family Railcard.
I'd totally forgotten about railcards, it's been so long that I qualified for one. But suddenly Cubling is 5 and she's a paying guest on trains, plus I've resolved to save the planet and avoid flying whenever I can.
This year's family holiday, after much exploration of possible locations, will send us to Devon and we decided to take the train. A friend mentioned that this trip alone would probably pay for a railcard, and yes, she was right!

And once you've got one, you want to use it, so we took advantage of this incredible summer weather and sneakily went off to Oban. We got what must have been the last family room available and stayed in a very lovely hotel room with great beds to jump on and for the first time, Snowflake slept reasonably in a strange bed, hurray.

We had lots of ice cream, threw a lot of stones into the sea and Cubling went on a seal trip with her dad which she was very excited about.

And everyone who would listen would be told that they were going/had been on a train trip to up there (Oban sounds like the German "oben" which translates to "up there").

Yes, long train journeys can be tricky with small children but a) they can move b) I don't get car sick c) Snowflake doesn't get car sick and d) the kids do actually enjoy the novelty of it as we don't take the train often.

This coming weekend, the National Rail Museum in York is hosting the Railfest 2012 from 2-10th June. It sounds like a lot of fun and if your either close or have a train line to York, make sure to pay it a visit and make a trip out of it!

Disclosure: I have been in touch with the National Railway Museum and received a couple of minor goodies from them without any obligation to blog. I'd really love to go to the Railfest with the kids but alas, time is short and we're a long way from York. More than anything, I love travelling by train and I love museums and that's that ;)