I have nothing that even comes close to your current hell. My now-husband attempted to woo me by flashing his cash and booking a Hilton for our first holiday together, but I got the squits from the hotel food and spent our first night there in the bathroom instead of the bed.

That said, we’re supposed to be going on the absolute holiday of a lifetime in a couple weeks, it’s been planned for ages, proper bucket list stuff…and now it might be buggered by the Gatwick strikes. So get back to me once that resolves either way, I guess…

I was a kid and that year my birthday fell on Thanksgiving. The big plan was to go out to see the St. Louis Blues play (when Wayne Gretzky was playing!). Well my 2 year older brother had a meltdown how I wasn’t worthy of bring along and he should go. My asshole dad, who never liked me, did just that. He took my brother, on my birthday, to see hockey’s greatest player.

I don’t talk to either of them for unrelated reasons but that was a shit birthday.

Have you tried France?

During a flight to Canada for a two week holiday (plus 3 day work conference for my wife), our son who was four at the time develops a big old chickenpox blister on his back.

Our first family holiday to Wales.

• Didn’t realise the drive would take 6 hours
• Oldest kid is somewhat on the spectrum, we stupidly didn’t talk about it before we left
• Kid decided he didn’t like it the moment we pull up to sign in and wanted to go home
• We tried to stick it out but he just complained about everything
• 2 days in youngest kid starts doing the same
• The wife starts feeling sick too, turns out eldest was actually sick from nursery
• Wife gets sicker than she’s ever been, can’t get out of bed
• Everything is horribly expensive (it was some knock off center parcs thing) which we didn’t really budget for
• It rains the whole time
• Everyone is in bed the most of the days, have maybe 1 nice afternoon
• No one sleeps through the night, spend most of the time lying on the floor hard floor
• Decide to come home after 4 days even though we paid for 7

Massive waste of time, money and energy, going somewhere shorter and cheaper next time!

As a child, it had to be the last day on holiday in Corfu. We hired a boat and went to a small island. I, knowing best, refused to wear my jelly shoes in the water. Promptly stood on a sea urchin. Being the last day, my parents decided it would be better to fly home and go straight to A&E from the airport to get the spines tweezed out of the sole of my foot.

Ohh, or that time when we went to America, and I wandered out of my depth in the public swimming pool, panicked and started to drown. Thankfully, people noticed and I was rescued! Ambulance came, but luckily I was alright, and didn’t need any treatment.

As an adult, definitely Egypt. Both me and my partner had food poisoning pretty much from day one. That, and the normal stories of leering locals and attempted scams that you always hear about. The sea was amazing though - almost worth the two weeks of a dodgy tummy!

I grew up abroad because of my dad’s job so we’d come back to the uk every summer to visit family. One year we were getting ready to fly back and I woke up the morning of the flight with the worst cold I’d had all year. Door to door the travel time was probably close to 20 hours if not more, with 14 in the air and 3 on the ground for a layover in the middle.