OK, so you've opened all the presents, the kids are climbing the walls and you need to get out of the house to work off that turkey + Christmas pudding.. How about some Geocaching ?
It's probably old hat to some of you but I'd never heard of it until this week. Essentially there are some 1,500,000 locations around the world where people have placed a small box with worthless trinkets in, and usually a pad + pen to record visits. It's like a treasure hunt on a worldwide scale.
So you get the geocache app on your smartphone and locate your nearest cache using your phones compass, I found there were 4 in less than a half mile from our house today ! In fact, that would explain why we've been seeing various people walking the perimeter of our grounds with a compass.
After much searching we found our first cache, a small tupperware box under a tree stump! Some 20 odd names were down on the list from people who had found it before and inside was an assortment of things like pencil erasers, hair bobbles etc. Harry took out a car-shaped eraser and put in a spangly pencil. He was super chuffed.. and of course it's free.
It certainly gives the toddlers an interest in getting out and about in the countryside.
Here's their website http://www.geocaching.com/ whack in your postcode, you'll be surprised how many there are near you.