I've noticed a pattern in our lives: we will revisit former holiday haunts years and sometimes decades after the fact. Almost by accident, I've drifted into the habit of recreating the shots we took the first time. (Emily is a great help with this, getting them to stand in just the right spot and position their arms and legs correctly.) It's a silly thing to do, but one day the kids will thank us for it, and then carry on the tradition with their own children. I hope.

Oh, you know the drill by now, don't you?

Back in May, I was prepping a piece on independent festivals to counter all the usual stuff that Metro publish about Reading and Glastonbury. One of the people I interviewed was the creative director for Just So, an annual children's festival on the beautiful Rode Hall estate in Lancashire. They sent us complimentary tickets, so we went. And it was fabulous.

In this gallery we take in a couple of ruined castles, visit the Worm's Head at Rhossili and find the quietest and most tranquil beach we'd ever encountered. But I'm not telling you where it is, because otherwise everyone will want one.

We doubled up on our summer holidays this year - a week in Pembrokeshire, in the usual spot, followed by a week in the Gower peninsula. This first collection groups the Pembrokeshire shots before moving on to Swansea and Mumbles.

In April I got the chance to interview Andy Day (yes, the tall one off CBeebies), who was on tour with his band the Oddsocks. Three of the boys were in Shropshire with grandparents, so Em and I took Edward and made a minibreak out of it, visiting the Tate Modern and Greenwich and kicking around on a boat before heading over to Shepherds Bush on Friday. The gig was great, and Andy was friendly and obliging, although not quite as tall as he looks on TV.

I can't actually remember why we went to Stratford, except that it was there. The two of us went there for our first weekend away, all the way back in 2003, so it was a good excuse to go back and see what had changed - although Stratford is very proud of its heritage and thus the answer was 'not a lot'. There is a wonderful hands on exhibition at the RSC, and if you get time the high street boasts the MAD museum, home to all sorts of clockwork and mechanical art.

In February we braved the snow to visit Bronte country in the heart (well all right, the left arm) of Yorkshire. Pitching down at the Haworth Youth Hostel - where I had stayed some twenty-six years previously on a school trip - we visited museums in Bradford and Keighley, various art galleries, and even had time to make a snowman. (Fun fact: in Haworth there is a cafe that offers a Bronte Breakfast and a Bronte Brunch, which is not at all tacky.)