A family walking holiday in Exmoor offers an old-fashioned escape: communal dining, guided walks, and evening ceilidhs. One mother finds her children embracing the outdoors despite a dramatic tick removal incident.
"I'm not going to wake her up," I hiss at my 12-year-old son, standing half-naked in a dark corridor of a Victorian house. "Please, Mum. She said we could come at any time! I don't want to get Lyme disease," he begs. The door opens and Jill, one of the guides, emerges with tweezers, cheerily removing the tick embedded in my son's torso.
This scene feels straight out of an Enid Blyton boarding school novel. Our base is Holnicote House near Selworthy, run by HF Holidays, a cooperative founded in 1913 to give working people access to countryside walking holidays. Over a century later, the spirit remains: communal dining, organised walks, and evening entertainment. We share two simple but spacious rooms with Victorian sash windows.
Each day offers four graded walks, from 3 to 10 miles. My children quickly adapt, ticking boxes for packed lunches, choosing walks, and joining nightly activities. They are the only mixed-race children here, but they fold easily into the tribe of repeaters. The house itself has a poignant history: during WWII, it became Britain's first mixed-race orphanage for children of Black American GIs and white British mothers.
Initial resistance to walking turns to enthusiasm as they make friends. Walks are brilliantly paced with snack stops, paddle stops, tree climbing, and ice-cream at the end. Our guide, a former geography teacher, engages them with tree ring counting and leaf identification. A highlight is a walk starting with two stops on the West Somerset Railway's steam train and ending at Dunster Castle, rising fairytale-like from a deer-filled field.
As a solo parent, I'm never lonely. Long conversations lead to shared meals and drinks. The children bag "kids tables" at dinner, forcing adults to mingle. Food is surprisingly good: three-course dinners nightly. The holiday ends with a live ceilidh. Watching my daughters line dance with pensioners, I vow to return with grandchildren. On the drive home, my son declares this holiday better than any beach holiday – despite the ticks. I may have found my new walking buddy.