Family holidays: bludgeon your plans through... they'll thank you for it one day

Grit your teeth, it's time to plan your family trip.

When I ask Maddy(12) which has been her favorite family trip ever, she says, without any need for reflection, "Walking in Slovakia - the Tatra mountains - all those days we did going from hut to hut." Now you might nod and think this seems reasonable. The Tatras are an impressively jagged range, with forbidding gorges, snowy summits and paths that cling to cliffs over precipices. There is plenty to conjure great imaginings of hobbits, perhaps, or Frozen's Arendelle. It is certainly a landscape for adventure that any child might love, and the huts are magical caverns of hospitality and warmth.

However, you didn't hear the complaints I had to bear beforehand: "I hate walking!" "I won't do it!" and "I'm not going!" The countdown to commencement was horrible. I had to threaten, pester and, inevitably, dangle several large carrots, just to get us all to the starting point. After that, by some magical and inexplicable process, she walked : the anger and resentment faded to be replaced by a gorgeous striding amazon. From this I deduce the First Law of Happy Family Holidays: bludgeon your plans through despite all opposition. They will thank you for it - possibly after many, many years, or even on your death bed.

I must admit I was surprised that Maddy did not first mention Bulgaria, more precisely, the Buzludzha. For me, that was pure family holiday entertainment at its zenith. We drove high into the Stara Planina mountains close to Bulgaria's northern border and eventually pulled up, on a treeless rocky summit, outside a massive concrete flying saucer. 

This was the former communist party HQ, a wildly ambitious building erected to prove how superior communism could be. When it was scarcely a decade old, it was locked up and abandoned. In theory nobody is allowed entry. However, a little search around the back revealed a hole in the concrete wall, six feet up. Moddy and I scrambled inside. Her mum, Sophie, was wearing the wrong clothes and refused at the first hurdle, so we left her outside.

For the next hour, father and daughter wandered, bemused, through the vast ruined palace of a vanished tyranny. If felt as ancient as a pyramid, as distant as Mars. It took me all that hour to explain to Maddy how it came to exist. Who were these bearded frowning mosaics of men?

When we finally exited, Maddy was all fired up - partly, I reckon, because mum had not experienced what she had. It had happened by accident on that occasion, but I reckon this is a useful tactic: divide the gang, allowing a little separateness in your togetherness.

Not that you have to travel a long way and practise illicit entry of foreign monuments. Caitlin, my eldest daughter, recalls her best family moment at Sherwood Forest Center Parcs: "I really loved watching my brothers try to drown themselves going down the waterslides."

Good family holidays, I should say, allow children to entertain themselves endlessly without any parental input whatsoever. The most memorable moments of my own childhood holidays frequently do not feature adults at all. Like the time my brother and I decided to "do" rock climbing, stealing a washing line from a caravan park and attempting some ambitious crags in Langdale. We scared ourselves rigid and arrived back covered in grazes and mud to find our parents snoozing.

Next question is : do you need to go far? Absolutely not. My favorite adventure is exploring the caves and cliffs on the Yorkshire coast: Flamborough Head is a particular treasure. Even with a knowledge of the tide times, this can be a bladder-wracking experience. The great Youth Hostel up the coast at Boggle Hole offers a similar opportunity.

Come to think of it, I don't think luxury and successful family trips go together at all. Too often money only brings access to all those demon machines that will lure your children into behaving like thumb-crazy, television-addicted, app-hopping monsters - like most adults, in other words. Be brave and book that hostel without internet, Wi-Fi or reception. The kids will glare and complain for a few minutes, then shuffle off to the lake and start paddling. Hours later you will find them, clear-eyed and buzzing, having built a raft from driftwood and decided to set sail for Tahiti. All that's left to do is for you to join them.