If you’ve been around these parts for a while, you’ll know that Mrs Lighty is a tad obsessed with babywearing. We were converted to babywearing very early on, when the lovely Becky of Incredible Isla lent us her beloved Connecta to try, and we haven’t looked back since. It’s something that both Mr Lighty and I feel quite confident about now, and it’s also something which all three of us, Baby Lighty included, love. However, this didn’t stop us from having our doubts over whether we could go buggy free for a whole weekend. Indeed, what about going buggy free for a whole week?!!

We’ve recently been lucky enough to have had two holidays, one to Cornwall, and one to Bouillon in Belgium. And let’s face it, we were always going to pack a ridiculous amount of crap really useful things we’d definitely need. Which is why, as we sat packing up the car for our first road trip of the summer, we debated whether to be bold and go completely buggy free. And so we did. One less piece of crap really useful thing to put in the car, after all.

As it turned out, both of our destinations this summer were rather hilly. We knew Cornwall would be, as we’d been there before, but Bouillon turned out to be the same. I feel that this point kind of justified our decision to go buggy free on each occasion, with no buggy to manoeuvre up the steep hills!! But how did we get on? Well, here are the pros and cons of a buggy free holiday:

Pros:

• We saved a massive amount of space in the car! For once, the car wasn’t packed to the rafters. This always makes the journey a little more comfortable!
• Both Mr Lighty and I felt that wearing Baby Lighty was an easier option than pushing him in a buggy up the hills. If you’ve ever been to Carbis Bay or Sennen Cove in Cornwall, rest assured that the hills in Bouillon are of a similar gradient!

• We had our hands free, which is always helpful when paying for tickets or reaching for your camera.
• We were able to get to places which aren’t accessible to the buggy. Visiting a National Trust property, for example, is a lot easier when you don’t have to worry about lugging a buggy upstairs or leaving it unattended downstairs. Having Baby Lighty in the sling is a much nicer way to visit!
• In a weird way, using the sling often encourages Baby Lighty to walk more. I know, I know, this goes against the myth that carried children are often thought to be lazier children. But if we’d had the buggy, he would have wanted to get in and out all the time. Yet he knows that once we put him in the sling, he’s likely to be in it for a while. This means that at the zoo and castle in Bouillon, for example, he would walk the majority of the visit, and we’d only pop him in the sling to get to and from our destination.

• The closeness you feel when wearing Baby Lighty often feels like another way in which we experience the holiday through his eyes. We loved pointing things out to him while he was in the sling and having conversations with him about what we were doing.

Cons:

• Having the buggy is useful for loading all of your bags on if you’re headed to the beach, for example. However, I do think that by using the sling, we’re more inclined to pack light for days out!
• When we were in Belgium, it was rather hot!! I can appreciate that in some hotter climates, you may not feel comfortable or safe babywearing.

I have to admit, in advance of going buggy free, the only thing that we were particularly worried about was naptimes. We didn’t think it would be so much of a problem being buggy free in Cornwall, purely because we knew we’d be doing a fair amount of travelling by car, and Baby Lighty would therefore be able to sleep during the car journeys. However, we were worried about Bouillon. We’d planned for all of our visits there be taken on foot. Would this mean that Baby Lighty would have less opportunity to nap? In actual fact, we needn’t’ve worried. Baby Lighty did actually take naps in his sling while we were away. At one point we even managed to stop for a drink in a lovely little bar we found with him soundo on Mr Lighty!

We were really pleasantly surprised by our experience of going buggy free. Indeed, at the end of both weekends, we remarked that we really hadn’t missed the buggy at all. If you’re an experienced or confident babywearer, it’s definitely something to think about. I know us Lightys are slightly biased towards babywearing, but I’d definitely recommend going buggy free!

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