But driving for more than two and a half hours or so was asking for trouble so we booked a luxurious Dorset family-friendly hotel (Moonfleet Manor) on the way down, a nice destination hotel in Cornwall and running our of money, a small B&B in Somerset on the way back. All went well until the B&B.
The hosts were charming, the cooking excellent, the garden stunning but the cottage was cramped and when Tom woke up screaming at 4am for the third time that night, his cries echoed round the house and through our brains. Desperate, I grabbed the nearest cliché and put him in the car and drove the roads of Somerset for two hours. Tom slept (eventually), my wife lay rigid with worry and I, sadly, ran over a cat. It was awful.
If only the Priory Inn in Tetbury had been open. A run-down pub on the edge of the village has been refurbished completely by Tanya and Dave Kelly and they opened as a hotel/gastropub early last year. It now has 14 ensuite contemporary bedrooms and the restaurant has already won a regional award from Harden's. We took our two boys, Tom, now two, and Jo-Jo, one, to stay over a wet autumn weekend recently.
The heart of the operation is the gastropub. The menu is advertised as being British cuisine but the reality is that many dishes have an Italian flavour and are all the better for it. For a more informal bite, there are gourmet pizzas from the wood-fired oven. We did not try them but they did look delicious.
The wine list is one of the best I have seen outside London in terms of choice and keen pricing. The icing on the cake, is that new parents can get to experience some of this. Instead of being cooped upstairs babysitting the boys, we sat down at our table, baby monitor to hand.
The monitors work (just) and we lingered over our meal, sampled the win and looked on as other grateful parents did the same. Favourite dishes included a starter of fresh linguiini with asparagus and Scottish smoked salmon (£5.95) and Medallions of pork tenderloin wrapped in Parma ham with roasted potatoes, fresh vegetables and sage jus (£11.95).
Tanya and Dave pride themselves on their welcome for families. While the Priory Inn is not in the class of the bigger family-friendly hotels in terms of facilities - for example, there is little outside space for the kids to run around - the staff worked harder to counter the "parental guilt at disturbing others" effect than anywhere else we have visited.
The key to this was the coffee bar, effectively a small family room, where children can have their meals and play with a selection of toys. There is a great children's menu - full of the usual favourites but here the fish fingers and nuggets are home-made and healthy.
In between eating, we strolled around Tetbury, went to a local fair and visited the landscaped acres of Westonbirt Arboretum, five minutes down the road by car. Next time we go down we will head for the Cotswold Farm Park, 40 minutes' away, about which we heard great things from other parents.
And so to the bedrooms. We stayed in interconnecting rooms with both boys next door. Cribs, toys and videos were all thoughtfully provided and the décor is all creams and browns, pleasingly stylish and modern. But the rooms themselves are smallish and when it came to bathtime, we found the bathroom cramped - the only child-unfriendly aspect to the whole weekend. But that was a small niggle compared to the warmth of the welcome overall. The Priory Inn is a great place to stay for a night or two - a perfect stopping-off point to and from the South-West. No more B&B baby nightmares.
NEED TO KNOW
The Priory Inn - www.theprioryinn.co.uk - offers dinner B&B from £69pp, or a family room B&B from £129
