NEW ELECTRONIC MAP OF BRITAIN FOR KIDS CURES HALF-TERM MISERY BY DIRECTING PARENTS
TO CHILD-FRIENDLY SIGHTS AND PIT STOPS
- Inventors aim to reduce back seat groan factor by avoiding “boring old houses and weird food”
- New “Tot-Nav” works with satellite navigation equipment to guide mums and dads to 3,000 better and often cheaper off-the-beaten-track alternatives
A new electronic guide to the UK that pinpoints restaurants and places of interest that are perfect for kids has been launched to coincide with Autumn half term.
The creators of the guide hope that it will save parents the cost and the misery of trips to motorway services by offering cheaper, less crowded and more pleasant alternatives that are slightly off the beaten track.
In preparation for the launch of the product, RoadTour consulted with its kids’ panel for their top ten list of Britain’s most boring attractions for children (verbatim comments in brackets):
1. Bridgemere Garden World, Nantwich, Cheshire – a six acre garden centre – “a great big shed full of plants”
2. Glyndebourne – “old people’s music that goes on for hours”
3. Builth Wells Castle – “pretty much a pile of earth”
4. Stonehenge – “a bunch of stones and you can’t even climb on them”
5. St Albans Organ Museum – “old fashioned record players and weird pianos and you have to sit there and listen to them”
6. Louis Tussauds House of Wax, Great Yarmouth – “I couldn’t even figure out who the people were.”
7. Speakers corner, London – “Just a whole bunch of tourists taking pictures of nothing.”
8. National Lobster Hatchery, Paidstow, Cornwall – “I’m not really into lobster larvae, to be honest.”
9. Savings Bank Museum, Ruthwell, Dumfries – “just a load of piggy banks.”
10. Site of the Battle of Hastings – “It’s just a field.”
The 3,000 sites in the guide are selected for the quality of their food for kids (“no weird, fancy rubbish” as one child reviewer put it), the cleanliness and accessibility of their bathroom facilities and the entertainment value of their historical sites and attractions (“no boring rooms with wallpaper and dead animal heads”).
The guide is a simple software download that is easily installed on a range of leading Satellite Navigation devices. It enables parents to quickly pinpoint child-friendly locations when nature, hunger or boredom calls.
“For many families with young children, a trip away from home can often seem as complicated as an Apollo Moon mission and about as much fun as two weeks of booster maths classes”, said Daniel Taylor, managing director of RoadTour, developers of the product. “Tot-Nav should see an end to miserable journeys for the kids. It helps families get from A to B much more effectively and enjoyably than the A to Z.”
“There is a world of difference between what one person means by child-friendly and another. We have spent 5 years researching all the very best places to take children. These are places that make parents and their children feel welcome,” said Conrad Doyle, Founding Director of www.childfriendly.co.uk , RoadTour’s partner.Most journeys by families are marked off by visits to characterless and expensive motorway service stations, described by Which? as “dingy and unattractive”. The AA found 50% of service stations “Very Poor” and none more than “Acceptable” for Child Friendliness or Price. Food can be particularly expensive and variable according to Which?, with a recent report referring to “Chilli Con Cardboard”.
- Ends –
NOTES TO EDITORS
1) Tot-Nav costs a one-off £9.95 and can be downloaded from www.roadtour.co.uk.
2) Images and screen shots are available
3) Free copies are available for reader offers and competitions.
4) AA Report: http://www.theaa.com/public_affairs/reports/msa-report-2007.pdf
5) Keep Moving: http://www.keepmoving.co.uk/home_content.aspx?content=expensive-lunches
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