Competition: Your chance to be a travel writer

Fancy yourself as a travel writer? Think one of your kids might be the next Bill Bryson? Been on a wonderful family holiday you’d like to share with like-minded parents and kids?

In celebration of its seventh birthday, leading family-travel website TaketheFamily.com is launching a travel-writing competition for adults and children, with three categories: Parents; Teens; and Under-13s.

Takethefamily.com is renowned for its independent editorial content, authored by an in-house team and around 40 freelance travel writers based around the world.

From camper-vanning with grandchildren in Skegness to snorkelling on the Great Barrier Reef, from taking kids to muddy festivals to whitewater-rafting in Indonesia, our writers scour the globe with their families to bring you the experiences of which family holiday memories are made.

Competition details are on Takethefamily’s page on Facebook, including how to submit your piece. Submissions should be 250–500 words long for the Under-13s category and 500–1000 words long for Teens and Parents, and can be about any form of family travel anywhere in the world.

All winners and the two runners-up in each category will be published on the website, with the opportunity to submit work on a longer-term basis. In addition, the winners will receive the following fabulous prizes:

Parent Category: a place on one of prize-winning journalist Dea Birkett’s intensive Travel Writing Workshops, with the chance to pitch to the editor of a national travel publication.

Teen Category: A 2-hour private city tour by award-winning Context Travel (www.contexttravel.com), who run customizable walks around the world, some with a family bias, including a London walk focusing on English fashion ‘from Tudor Splendour to Westwood Punk’, a pizza-making workshop and walking seminar in Naples, a tour of Underground Rome, a City of Chocolate tour of Barcelona, a New York Architecture walking tour, and a Plague in Venice tour.

Kids’ Category: A free weekend stay for a family at a youth hostel of choice in England or Wales, plus a year’s family Youth Hostel Association membership.

In addition, one runner-up in each category will receive a year’s family membership to the Youth Hostel Association (www.yha.org.uk). Among the YHA’s most family-friendly properties are Hartington, a 17th-century Derbyshire mansion with an adventure playground and pets’ area, the eco-friendly National Forest, also in Derbyshire and handy for the family attractions of Conkers, Alton Towers, Drayton Manor, Tamworth Snowdome and WaterWorld, and Conwy, with four-bed en-suite rooms close to the beach and Conwy Castle.

The closing date is midnight on Friday, September 16 and the winners will be announced in mid October.

Related topics: