Before you go, encourage your kids to find out about the places you’ll be travelling through. Where possible, stop off along the way to see local attractions.

Even if your journey doesn’t include any sight-seeing highlights, take a break every couple of hours anyway. Find a picnic spot or some lawn where your family can stretch their legs and get rid of some of that excess energy. Take a ball and cricket bat or beach tennis set so you can get some exercise.

Travel at night or in the early morning when your kids are likely to sleep. Don’t forget to pack pillows, blankets, and favourite toys.

Remember to include plenty of games. A deck of cards, a magnetic chess set, colouring-in book, paper and crayons will go far. Depending on your children’s ages, a trivia book or set of Trivial Pursuit questions might be a good companion. You can also play noughts and crosses and hangman.

Write down the towns and villages you’ll pass on the way to your destination, and let the kids check them off.

Audio books are an invaluable resource on a long journey, and there’s a wide selection available. Take along some music too; a selection of your children’s favourite nursery rhymes will keep them happy for ages. If you can’t bear the thought of driving another kilometre to the strains of ‘Old McDonald’s Farm’, give them walkmans.

Don’t give them too many sweets in the car. You don’t want your passengers on a sugar high in a confined space! Rather, give them fruit juice, rolls or muesli bars.

Bring wet wipes, serviettes, bottled water, plasters, torch, and bedding, and don’t forget some bags for rubbish.

Stuck for ideas? Here are some car-friendly games:

I Spy With My Little Eye:
One person says, “I spy with my little eye, something beginning with…”, naming the first letter of the object they’ve chosen. (The object can be inside or outside the car.) Everyone else has to guess the object. The first person to guess correctly then chooses their own object, and the game starts again.

The collective story game:
Everyone in the car helps to make up a story. One person provides the first sentence, the next person provides the second, and so on. If you want to vary this game, you could limit the number of characters, or choose setting or genre beforehand. You could also have participants use consecutive letters of the alphabet. So the first sentence would begin with A, the second sentence with B, and so on.

The car game:
Invent stories about people in the car next to yours. Decide what their names are, where they live, what they like to eat, where they’re going, and so on.

Twenty Questions / Animal, Vegetable or Mineral:
One player thinks of an object, which can be either animal, vegetable or mineral. Everybody else has to find out what it is by asking no more than 20 questions. The first player is only allowed to answer “yes”, “no” or “maybe”. The person who guesses correctly then has a chance to think up something.

As a variation, you could try guessing a famous person or place.

Alphabetical songs:
Try and find songs beginning with consecutive letters of the alphabet. The first song would begin with A, the second with B, etc.

The Five Game:
The object of this game is to count to 100 without making a mistake. The first person says “one”, the second person says “two”, and so on. Every time you get to a number that’s divisible by five or contains five, say “buzz” instead of the number. If one person hesitates or forgets to say “buzz”, everybody has to start from the beginning. If this is too easy, say “buzz” for every number containing a seven (17) or that’s divisible by seven (21).