Having spent much of the past decade driving across Europe with my family, I am undaunted by long car journeys with children. For many years I would share the driving with my husband, Max (doing an hour of a 16-hour journey technically counts as sharing), but over time we defaulted to established roles. He prefers being behind the wheel and I’m happy to pay the toll of incessant snack provision to the kids and picking up their dropped felt-tip pens every three minutes in return for not having to navigate foreign roundabouts and being able to gaze wistfully out of the window with my feet on the dashboard.
In recent years we have driven to France, Italy and Switzerland. My fastidious organisational skills and Max’s endless patience while researching interesting hotels and great restaurants means that we are unfazed by ambitious and logistic-heavy holidays. This year, shorter on time, we and our two daughters, aged 8 and 11, flew to southern Spain for a road trip around Andalusia.
After picking up our car at Seville airport, we drove the 20 minutes into the city for a whistle-stop 24 hours. Our hotel for the night was Corral del Rey, a 17th-century casa palacio (equivalent to a stately home) in the old quarter of Barrio Alfalfa. Its Tarifa stone floors, marble columns and vaulted ceilings provide a luxurious, welcome escape from the 40C heat outside. Summer in southern Spain is not for the faint-hearted, but if you can hack the heat and drive your children mad with relentless sun-cream application, you’ll benefit from the relative quiet of low season inland.
Corral del Rey was once a stately home
WAYNE CHASAN
We were keen to see some live dance, either at Peña Flamenca Torres Macarena — a traditional venue recommended by Corral del Rey’s Anglo-Iberian co-owner Anthony Reid (from £9; peñaflamencatorresmacarena.com) — or Museo del Baile Flamenco (from £25; museodelbaileflamenco.com). But the girls were flagging from a day of travelling, so we prioritised dinner.
We had a delicious meal at the buzzy Bodega Diaz Salazar, with ice-cold Cruzcampo beers for us and soft drinks for the kids, while eating the first of many plates of anchovies, patatas bravas and tuna, simply but artfully presented (tapas from £4; bodegadiazsalazar.com).
After eating we strolled through the Plaza Virgen de los Reyes, in the shadow of the city’s majestic cathedral. There were tours in horse-drawn carriages available and an opera singer and cellist serenaded passers-by. The girls were happy when we ended the night with a quick dip in the hotel’s tiny rooftop pool before bed.
Plaza Virgen de los Reyes in the center of Seville
ALAMY
The rest of our time in Seville was spent mooching around its winding streets, exploring the numerous textile and ceramics shops (many of which are mercifully shaded with awnings and canopies) and taking plenty of time for more food and drink. We had an excellent lunch at Catalina La Barra, a smart and bustling tapas bar in a prime corner spot at the Plaza de la Alfalfa serving grilled prawns and more refined dishes such as confit of cod and baby clams cooked in sherry. There was a great wine list and Max was a fan of the house vermouth, served over ice (tapas from £3; catalinagrupo.com).
On previous road trips I’d had audiobooks and podcasts prepared to keep the kids entertained. However, most of the journeys on this holiday were only about an hour long, so we happily played our favourite game, road trip jukebox, taking turns to choose the next song, resulting in an eclectic mix of the Beach Boys, Olivia Rodrigo and the Encanto soundtrack.
• Read our full travel guide to Seville
A rustic hideaway in the hills
Our next stop was Hacienda de San Rafael, a 50-minute drive from Seville on the road to Jerez. The former olive estate has been restored and converted into a rustic, bohemian hideaway, blooming with bright pink bougainvillea. We had our own casita for three nights and, after the heat and narrow streets of the city, it was lovely to explore the vast jasmine-scented gardens and olive groves under an expansive blue sky, while the girls took advantage of the three swimming pools on offer for some serious splash time.
Hacienda de San Rafael has been converted into a rustic hideaway
From the style and understated charm of San Rafael to a classic Spanish holiday resort. Hotel Fuerte de Conil was just over an hour’s drive away, in Conil de la Frontera, on the Costa de la Luz. It has a kids’ club, pool activities and slightly naff but fun night-time entertainment (B&B doubles from £75; fuertehoteles.com). On the first night we wandered along the seafront promenade, busy with Spanish tourists and market stalls, and into the old town, which was so packed that I thought we must have joined a crowd leaving a concert — it turned out that this was just Conil de la Frontera during high season (who would have thought Seville would be the quiet stop on our trip?). But there was no shortage of tapas places and we found a table for dinner, after which we walked through a small square where crowds had gathered to watch street performers. On another night we ate wild red tuna, a local speciality, at La Fontanilla as we watched the sunset from the beach (mains from £20; lafontanilla.com).
We were about halfway through our trip and in full holiday mode. The girls loved the excitement of the regular change of scenery as we moved from city to countryside to beach. We got into a happy rhythm of moving to a new place, exploring and getting a feel for our surroundings, and Max and I even found some time to read a few pages of our books and relax. Our itinerant approach also made the holiday feel really long, in a good way. We travelled very light to avoid too much packing, unpacking and schlepping, and the children were at just the right age to enjoy the variety and not moan too much about the car journeys.
Fontanilla beach is a five-minute drive from Conil de la Frontera
ALAMY
• 21 of the best luxury villas in Andalusia
On to Tarifa for beaches and tennis
For our penultimate stop we travelled to Tarifa, a surfer’s paradise and the most southerly town in mainland Europe, only about ten miles from Morocco across the Strait of Gibraltar. En route the sun-bleached landscape was populated by brown cows, desiccated sunflower fields and wind turbines. Taking a turn off the main road we arrived at the rural hideaway of Cortijo el Aguilon, a casa rural that has private cottages. With orange groves, tropical gardens and horses grazing outside our door, this quiet oasis feels like a true sanctuary. We were greeted by the owner, Belinda Braithwaite, who lives on the site and breeds horses. (In 1985 she rode her horse Dragon from Tarifa to Paris in four months.)
On our first night we headed to the beach at Bolonia and watched kitesurfers while the girls played in the sand. At a beach bar, with Bob Marley playing over the speakers, the crowd clapped as the sun dipped behind the waves. Over the next couple of days we visited Tarifa town (very cool with a hippy vibe and almost comically windy) and Vejer de la Frontera, a beautiful whitewashed city on a hill — each is a short drive from the hotel and a great place to buy local knick-knacks.
At the hotel we braved the heat for a game of tennis on the palm-tree-shaded court one morning and Braithwaite let the girls groom her horses, Turron, Coco, Poncho, Charlie Brown, Margarita and Tati. On our last night in Tarifa she arranged for a local guide to take us horse riding on the beach at sunset, which was truly magical.
Back to an old favourite near Cadiz
Our final stop on the trip was special too. Max and I had first stayed at Casa la Siesta, a rural retreat in the Cadiz countryside, after our wedding 15 years ago. We were keen to take the girls there and enjoy its slower pace.
Casa truly lived up to its billing as a house of rest. With six bedrooms and two stylish and secluded self-catering villas, it is all about unpretentious luxury. We stayed in the newly refurbished stables — a two-bedroom, two-bathroom house with a kitchen-dining room, living room and saltwater swimming pool.
Hannah Swerling with her family
Our blissful few days there were a lazy blur of lie-ins, pool games, night swims and relaxed meals in the courtyard, lined with lavender and lemon trees. The lunch and dinner menus change each day depending on what is available from the organic kitchen garden, and fresh fish and seafood is sourced from local suppliers. There was also a well-stocked wine cellar, a communal beer tap and fridges of cold drinks.
So 290 miles, 11 hours in the car, five stops and at least 23 plays of the Beach Boys’ Kokomo later, it was time to head home. From the baroque beauty of Seville and the lush Andalusian plains to the laid-back beach life in Tarifa, we experienced so many wonderful sides of this Spanish region, finding plenty to satisfy us and the girls. If you can survive the 40C heat, a busy schedule and two weeks on the road with your offspring, it might just be the perfect family holiday.
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Hannah Swerling was a guest of Corral del Rey, which has B&B doubles from £157 (corraldelrey.com); Hacienda de San Rafael, which has B&B doubles from £399 (haciendadesanrafael.com); Cortijo el Aguilon, which has B&B doubles from £125 (elaguilon.com); and Casa la Siesta, which has B&B doubles from £300 (casalasiesta.com). Fly to Seville