Sara Young and her boyfriend have spent years travelling the world with their two young children - but their latest trip has been their biggest challenge yet.
Going on holiday with young children is often a challenge, but one mum has taken things to the next level by travelling the world with her family.
Sara Young, 41, and her boyfriend travel Carl globetrot with their two little boys under the age of five. The young family has been travelling for years, spending their down time at their home in Antigua.
Their oldest child, Cameron, is just three and has already visited nearly 20 countries, while 14-month-old Dylan is already seeing what the world has to offer, despite only being born in 2023.
The young family is on a trip through Sweden, Norway, Lapland and the Arctic Circle. Earning money as a digital nomad, Sara works remotely from whatever country she is currently in, while Carl works six months on and six months off as a yacht captain.
Speaking to The Mirror, Sarah revealed the reason she decided to travel with kids, explaining that they are always going to be difficult - so you might as well deal with the tantrums in some of the most beautiful places in the world.
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“Having a one year old and a three year old is hard work, but you might as well be somewhere pretty or interesting or watching whales and have them be hard work at the same time," she said.
Camping in the Arctic Circle, in particular, comes with its own unique challenges that are different to what she's used to.
“It's midnight sun [at the moment], there's no night time, and because kids are so used to the circadian rhythm like ‘OK, it's bedtime’ when it gets dark but for the last three nights it's just been beautiful sunshine with no clouds and my son is like ‘Mummy can we go kayaking?” and I’m like it’s 9pm but okay let’s go kayaking!”
When it comes to their current trip, Sara did admit it’s possible the family has bitten off more than they can chew - but it's not the cold that's making things challenging.
"Its actually not as cold as you'd expect - its 10 degrees, its not really got much colder than that but the wind, it comes straight from the North Pole and over the water and that is extremely cold. We're lucky we packed more warm clothes than we need, so we just have to layer the boys up until they look like the Michelin Man!"
The difficulty comes with just how far away everything is, and how long they have to drive with small children.
“I think we underestimated the length of the road trip we're doing. We were hoping to do the driving during the day. But we've realised we're going to have to start driving overnight. We need to do a nine or a 12 hour route at one point and we were hoping just to break it up during the day and things. We've bitten off more than we can chew for the first time, just with the distances."
Despite the challenges, Sara told the Mirror that travelling with kids is one of the best experiences in the world - not only are you widening their horizons, but you’re also likely to be better treated by a lot of locals as people love children.
“We started the travel blog because when we have been travelling with the kids and we’ve met other couples, they always ask us about it, because they want to start to settle down and have children, but they don’t want to stop travelling and I always just say you don’t have to!”
“You just have to do things a little bit differently, maybe you need to stop more to let the kids stretch their legs, and some things take a little bit longer. But actually you get a completely different level of travelling because people love kids.”
She said tour guides interact more with her family because of her children, and locals will often come over and fuss over them.
“There were women when we were in Morocco in October, who had the full hijab on and things you know. And I couldn't speak Arabic, but they were cooing over the baby and kind of gesturing that they wanted to hold him, you know, So you'd have that opportunity to have a really nice connection with people, even though you don’t speak the language.”
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