Crieff Hydro

It was half-term last week and our decorator was doing our hallway, stairs, and landing. We decided that keeping three small children away from the central thoroughfares of the house was more hassle than removing them from the house entirely, and so headed off to Scotland for the week.

A storm made the journey north slow, and so we skipped our first night’s accommodation in Edinburgh and instead landed at my wife’s parents. The biggest two got left at their grandma and granddad’s as we took the one-year-old through to one of my favourite cities in the world: Edinburgh.

We lived in Edinburgh for a couple of years when we were engaged but child-free, and we both fell in love with the city. The architecture (particularly of New Town) is spectacular. The streets are wide, and there are views down to the sea for miles. There’s a buzz about the place, and so many interesting places to go. I got to explore Edinburgh in painful detail with a 6am walk after the baby decided that 4am was a perfectly normal wake-up time. We made it all the way from Stockbridge over to Arthur’s seat (about halfway up) and back before the rest of the city was awake.

He continued being a ~dickhead~ challenging young man when we moved onto the main course of our Scotland trip: Crieff Hydro.

The hotel is amazing for children, and I’ve never seen such a collection of (generally posh-sounding) three-children families in my life. The eldest loved the soft play and the badminton area, while the four-year-old loved the nightly discos. The baby loved the baby room, and all of them loved swimming! While the baby napped and the big two went to the kids club, I managed to spend an hour moving from jacuzzi to ice shower to sauna and back again. Bliss.

The baby continued to wake foolishly early, and so I saw a little of Crieff centre at 6am, and a lot of the hotel grounds. Eating at the buffet was a military operation every morning, with me taking the baby as soon as it opened, then the big two later on, and then managing to eat myself later on. Logistically, three children is difficult. Doing it when one of them is so thoroughly unreasonable is whatever level sits about difficult.

All-in-all, though, I’d say it was a good trip. Exhausting, sure. But fun. The kids enjoyed it, and all-in-all, isn’t that why we do things?

I’d recommend Crieff Hydro, and I’d especially recommend it if you’ve got children younger than 8 or so. However, I’d also recommend not leaving your house if you’ve got a cantankerous 1-year-old who thinks the whole world should exactly follow his whims. Make of that conflicting advice what you will.