Last Updated:July 19, 2025, 11:47 IST

Treated with suspicion, more than planning his trips, he claimed he was forced to spend hours proving his identity to the airport authorities and assuring them of his return.

Location :

Delhi, India, India

First Published:

‘Aliens!” The call came loud and shrill from the trees as I scanned the foliage for the unmistakable shape of my four-year-old son. For a moment, nothing stirred. The beams of light from the sun spotlit a nearby clump of bracken so intensely it reminded me of the torches Mulder and Scully used in The X Files.

Then, a rustle came from up ahead. “Quick! I found them,” he yelled before disappearing into a clearing between the pines. I walked on, to find, in front of us, the curved edges and spherical lines of a UFO, coloured so dark it nearly blended into the shadows. It was, of course, a metal sculpture representing the alien vessel said to have landed here over 40 years ago. On top of it stood my son.

Even before I managed to take a decent picture, he wanted to run on again. “We’ve got to find number four now,” he declared.

We were in Suffolk’s Rendlesham Forest, a 15-mile drive from Ipswich, walking a free UFO trail, based on the sighting of unexplained flying objects by US military officers based here in 1980. Loving to follow a trail of any kind over several hours – but especially one where he can tick off numbers, so he knows there is an end (handily, this one culminates in a playground) – he walked, ran and skipped the three miles, while I enjoyed spending time outside with him.

When it comes to the summer holidays, it can feel as if we are doing a countdown. Of the 13 weeks most children get off school each year, six are lumped together over the summer, making July and August feel like a stretch of endless time. Not only can it be a nightmare, due to the juggle of childcare and work, but keeping kids entertained and – crucially – active rather than sat in front of screens can be expensive. So many activities cost a fortune. But there is another way. And it is completely free. And that is the outdoors.

The UFO-themed walk was on Forestry England land, which is one of the first places to turn during the holidays. From interactive app-based trails that allow you to take videos of your child pretending to be a dragon complete with AI wings, to crafting missions where you work together to find natural items on the woodland floor to make the face of the Gruffalo, they are an inexpensive way to immerse yourself in nature.

On the UFO trail, a free leaflet at the start guided us around the trees where I could tell the story of the key sites. My son was so enamoured of the map and tale that the next morning at breakfast he asked me to read it again while he followed the map with his finger and remembered our adventure.

But an outdoor adventure doesn’t have to be deep in the forest, where maps are required. The next day, we headed to Thorpeness, home to the much-photographed House in the Clouds, a former water tower that was disguised as a red and black clapboard house in 1923. Our mission was to find a way to get a good photograph of it. We followed a footpath up a hill, past quirkily painted weatherboarded houses which were popular after the first world war. While I was in awe of the house we had come to see, my little one found it way more exciting to discover the windmill opposite (bought by the creator of the House in the Clouds to help pump the water).

Adjacent to Thorpeness is the town of Aldeburgh, where we spent hours on the shingle beach filling buckets with “magic stones”, chasing the waves, paddling in the North Sea and taking shelter under Maggi Hambling’s giant scallop shell sculpture when rain fell. The day was rounded off with a hearty helping of fish and chips from Aldeburgh Fish and Chips, owned by the same family since 1967. Weeks on, my son still talks about this day as one of the best in his life.

Beaches are always a winner when trying to convince kids that nature is cool. On a previous trip, I took my boy to New Quay in Ceredigion, west Wales (one of a few places that lay claim to being the inspiration for the characters and town in Dylan Thomas’s Under Milk Wood). We didn’t set foot indoors for an entire day. When the tide was out, we set up a beach “base camp” with some shade under a giant parasol, then proceeded to bury each other in the sand. Then we looked for jellyfish washed up on the shore (a great opportunity to teach him about them), went rock pooling in the shallows (we found crabs, limpets, anemones and periwinkles) and built an elaborate fortified river, hewn from the silt using our buckets and spades.

As the temperature rose, we swam in the sea and, just before the end of the day, we were treated to a spectacle of the resident bottlenose dolphins putting on an impromptu performance at dusk. None of this cost a penny. Yet we’d shared some of the best quality time I’ve experienced – bonding over the natural world, revelling in getting sand between our toes, and shivering in the cool waters of the Irish Sea.

For something that feels like a bigger trip to my son, I try to involve a train. A couple of summers ago, we took the fast train to Scotland, then caught the ferry to the Isle of Mull as foot passengers. There, I hired an e-bike with a child seat and trailer, and we stopped off to wild camp near a loch. He helped me put up the tent, I cooked our dinner on a stove and we bonded over a shared love of marshmallows.

We stayed up watching the sunset, despite it being way past his bedtime. “I love the sun so much,” he told me as we saw the sky turn purple. “I don’t want to go to sleep.” He did, thankfully, nod off under a sky full of stars, with not a mention of Bluey, Peppa Pig or any of the other characters he usually demands entertain him. On one of the last days, we woke before dawn. I packed a chocolate croissant in my bag and we climbed the nearest hill to watch the sun rise. He still talks about it and asks when we will do it again.

One of my most memorable trips with him was paddleboarding on the river near our house. I packed a picnic and we paddled to an island, where we sat and watched the birds, while he asked what each one was called and demanded we collect some of their lost feathers to take home, in the hope we might one day be able to make a cape that allowed us to fly back here.

Memories like this are priceless. I know, given his age, he probably won’t remember everything we do, but I hope going into the wild places will instil in him a knowledge that the natural world is a wondrous place and the backdrop to some of our happiest times together. For me, it helps to remember that when it comes to the holidays, instead of counting the days, I need instead to make the days count.

Phoebe Smith is the author of Wayfarer and the 2025 recipient of the Royal Geographical Society’s Ness award for promotion of accessible adventure, particularly to women and those from underprivileged communities

For decades people have speculated about this image: American Girl in Italy, by the great US photographer Ruth Orkin. On Florence’s Piazza della Repubblica in 1951, a tall young woman in a black dress walks the gauntlet between clusters of suit-wearing men. A few of them are leering at her. One man grabs his crotch, his lips pursed around some presumably unprintable utterance. Almost all of them are following her with their eyes. The woman’s face is hard to read, though she seems aggrieved by the attention – if not outright fearful for her safety.

In fact, according to the woman herself, Ninalee Allen Craig, there was something altogether more playful going on – though she insisted, to counter another assumption, that the photograph wasn’t staged. Craig, 23 at the time, was travelling around Europe when she encountered Orkin, who was staying at the same dollar-a-night hotel as her in Florence. The two women shared notes on solo travel and Orkin proposed a photo essay on the subject.

The next day they jaunted around the city, Orkin snapping the younger woman as she gazed at statues, chatted across café tables and rode shotgun in an open-top sports car.

At the Piazza della Repubblica, Orkin asked Allen to walk the gauntlet twice. The first time, Allen “clutched at herself and looked terribly frightened”, Orkin recalled in 1979. “I told her to walk by the second time, ‘as if it’s killing you but you’re going to make it’” – and that’s the shot that was used.

Allen’s memory of the scene was much sunnier. “I was having the time of my life,” she told CNN in 2017, the year before she died aged 90. “I was Beatrice walking through the streets of Florence.” In an interview with the Guardian she said the image “has been interpreted in a sinister way but it was quite the opposite. [The men] were having fun and so was I.”

Orkin’s photographs of Allen were published in Cosmopolitan in 1952. The article, featuring tips on “money, men and morals to see you through a gay trip and a safe one”, was entitled Don’t Be Afraid to Travel Alone. 

New York – New York, a show of photographs by Ruth Orkin, will be at CDIS / PhotoEspaña in Santander from 18 July to 18 October