“It’s given me the taste for going on holiday with the girls so I’m looking into booking one."
Katy's Story
Single mum, Katy, is stepping out of her comfort zone and taking her twin daughters on their first holiday.
Katy's twin daughters are 20 months old and she's bringing them up singlehandedly.
On top of that, she’s only recently moved to a village in Cheshire and doesn’t really know anyone in the area meaning that she has no childcare support from family or friends.
Because she doesn’t drive, she spends a lot of time at home on her own with the girls and can be quite isolated, she mentioned:
They’re with me 24/7 and I sometimes find it a bit difficult out and about with them.
Her social prescriber felt that Katy and the twins would benefit from a break away from the day-to-day routine in a place where activities were on-site or easily accessible, and where there might be other families.
Until being referred to Family Holiday Charity for a few nights away, Katy had viewed a holiday with the girls as a near impossibility. Money is tight, especially with the current cost of living crisis, so she’d never had the opportunity to take the twins away before.
What she really wanted was for them to experience what it was like to set foot on a sandy beach. And she also had a good reason of her own for choosing to head to Lancashire. Katy says:
There’s a programme on telly called 22 Kids and Counting and I wanted to go and visit the pie shop in Morecambe.
Although nervous about making the journey on her own with the girls, Katy was pleasantly surprised by how everything turned out.
I was anxious about getting there with the little ones because it was three and a half hours on the train, which ended up being five and a half hours because I had to wait for two hours at one station. But in the end, it was actually better than I expected it to be and the girls were very good.
When they got to their caravan at Regent Bay Holiday Park, the girls were thrilled by their new environment. Katy laughs:
The girls were just so happy getting into mischief, and pulling things out of drawers, getting all the pans out of the cupboard.
It wasn’t just the twins who loved the caravan. Katy was blown away by its size, with a bedroom for everyone.
I had a toilet in my bedroom and I thought that was really posh because I’ve never had that before!
She didn’t know much about Morecambe before going, “just that there was a promenade and a beach and that’s all I wanted for the girls – it was their first time on a beach. I got them a bucket and spade each and they loved it.”
Having successfully managed to get them all to the resort, when she got home Katy noticed that her confidence when going somewhere with her daughters had improved. Katy says:
It’s given me the taste for going on holiday with the girls so I’m looking into booking one. Morecambe was the first time I’d felt ok to let them run free and not fear that they were going to run off.