I have a favourite evening pursuit on holiday, which is to peruse maps and guidebooks for hours on end, planning walks and excursions. My quest in Wales over Easter was to try and find small little mountains that suit all the family.

Children and walking are sometimes a tricky combination. We definitely don’t always get it right with walks that have been cut short, mutiny and rebellion.

We have thoroughly tested this jacket since we got it in the autumn. It has been Oliver’s coat for school, weekends, days out and garden. Where Oliver has been this winter, the coat has been there too. And we’ve had a long winter to test it with several falls of snow in Hertfordshire!

We struck lucky with the weather in half-term on our visit to Exeter to see friends.

We made the most of the recent cold snowy snap by getting creative outside. I saw the idea for this ice candleholder on the internet. We’ve made an ice mobile before so this was a new take on the idea.

Looking back at 2012, it feels that this was the first year that we managed to get out on a more regular basis as a family to do some longer outdoor adventures.

We have an annual New Year trip with friends with the aim of spending some time outdoors. This is a great antidote to Christmas but is sometimes challenging in terms of weather conditions, especially convincing children to walk.

This is by no means a long walk (300m or so to the waterfall) but proved to be ideal for getting children outside between rain showers over the New Year week.

We had a Sunday out recently at Wicken Fen in Cambridgeshire. This is a reserve managed by the National Trust. There are trails to follow – some short (and completely on boardwalk) and other longer ones. The reserve is seen as a haven for bird and other wildlife.

The Dolgoch falls are found in the Dysynni valley, not far from Tywyn on the Welsh coast. It’s also on the route of the Tal-y-Llyn railway that runs between Tywyn and Abergynolwyn. There is a station at the falls so this is a good place to get off the train and explore.

Our October half-term has been spent in Wales for the last few years as I’m usually supervising a Duke of Edinburgh Award expedition. It's one of my favourite areas.

Sometimes motivating the children to do a walk can take a bit of effort. There are a few things though that they are instantly attracted to and make them raring to go. They love mazes!

The Sunday morning bike ride is a tradition in our family. Usually, it’s a chance for either myself or my husband to escape for a couple of hours and enjoy some child-free time pedalling up and down the hills of Hertfordshire.

We have owned Spotty Otter waterproofs since our eldest child was just walking. He’s now five and a half and we still love them. Why?

Scotland is our favourite holiday destination. Our trip in 2011 was to Skye. It wasn’t Skye that was the highlight of the holiday though, but the island lying to the east of it – Raasay.

There are some places that children instinctively love to explore. Jervaulx Abbey is one of these. I love ruined abbeys and monasteries, so was keen to go and have a look. I wasn’t expecting the children to share my enthusiasm.

This is one of our local places where we go if we need a bit of fresh air, peace and a place to burn off some energy. Mardley Heath nature reserve is just north of Welwyn in Hertfordshire. It’s hard to believe that parts of these woods are metres away from the A1.

In days when I had a bit more time to go hill walking, I was firmly against the existence of cable cars, trains and funiculars going up some of Britain’s highest mountains.

When we were packing for our holiday, we debated long and hard about what to take to transport our youngest child, Alice (2 years, 9 months) for our outdoor adventures. She is at that tricky stage where she’s too big for a carrier, and definitely more reluctant to go in it.

Before we went on holiday, we spent the fortnight before glued to the Olympic coverage on television. Oliver’s favourite events were the cycling, particularly the velodrome events.

Our local children’s centre organises a great summer holiday programme. The event on Saturday was called ‘Down the Woods’, run by a forest school practitioner and held at Mardley Heath Nature Reserve (next to the children’s centre).

The HQ of the RSPB is in Sandy, Bedfordshire (just off the A1), surrounded by nature reserve on heathland. We visited The Lodge last week and loved what we found.

I’ve noticed a bit of theme developing on the Little Trekkers Ambassadors blog – dinosaurs! We didn’t want to be left out so here’s our local dinosaur spotting opportunity.

I’ll be honest that the idea of going to an ‘adventure park’ or ‘theme park’ usually wants to make me run screaming to the hills in the other direction. My usual tactic is not to tell the children that these types of places exist as selfishly I would rather go for a walk, bike ride or any other outdoor activity.

We’ve just returned from a weekend camping in Norfolk. Oliver is super speedy on his bike and is capable of a decent length ride so we spent some time looking for family cycling options before we went. As Oliver is only 5, we prefer routes that are off-road but relatively easy as he’s on a bike without gears still.

Oliver and visited one of our favourite haunts at the weekend – Graveley Fruit Farm near Stevenage. I’ve been going there since I was a child to pick strawberries, raspberries and other soft fruit. When we moved back to Hertfordshire nearly three years ago, this was one of the places that I was very keen to rediscover.

Every July, my Duke of Edinburgh Award participants do a session that we call ‘navigating without a map’. It’s one of my favourite and most interesting sessions of the year!

Sunday was the day that the Olympic torch was travelling through Hertfordshire. Oliver has been learning about the Olympics at school so was very keen to see it. The torch wasn’t coming through where we live (except on its bus) so went to Norton to see it. This involved a walk from my parents where we could park.

We’ve been having adventures down our small lane and learning about different flowers.

During our recent camping trip to the Lake District, we decided to head up to Stickle Tarn from Langdale. I knew that this was a good walk for younger walkers as friends had done this with their families a couple of years ago. It didn’t disappoint!

We were camping near Rydal Water in the Lake District over the Jubilee holiday weekend. We’ve camped there several times over the last five years with a group of friends. A couple of years ago, the group of children made bark and leaf boats to sail on the river running through the campsite. This year, they were very keen to build more!

When we were walking through the bluebell woods at Wendover recently, Oliver grabbed my camera and got snapping.

Was it to be a walk that I thought all the family would enjoy or one of my favourite walks in Derbyshire? One was a bit closer to the yurt on Riddings Park Farm where we were staying, and the other was a longer drive.