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Planning what to do on a weekend with friends

The mistake is planning too much. A weekend holds one real activity a day and nothing else, because the good parts are the meals and the hours between. This is how to pick the two things and leave the rest alone.

27 items

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The items

  1. Ask what people actually want from the weekendWalking, sleeping, eating, or a night out. Three of those four combine. Ask before you book anything.
  2. Pick one anchor for Saturday and one for Sunday, and stop
  3. Check what is on locally that weekend
  4. Market days, and their mornings
  5. A festival, a match or a fête that fills the roads
  6. What is closed on a Sunday, which is usually more than you think
  7. Book only what needs booking
  8. The Saturday night restaurant, for the real number
  9. Anything with a guide, a boat or a tasting
  10. Tickets, if a queue would eat the afternoon
  11. The walk, if there is one
  12. Pick the distance for the slowest person, not the fittest
  13. Check it is a loop, or that the cars are where you finish
  14. Download the route offline
  15. Take water and something to eat
  16. Agree a turning-back time before you start
  17. The wet-weather plan, decided before you leave
  18. A town with a market and somewhere to eat indoors
  19. A museum, a cave, a brewery, an aquarium
  20. Board games and cards in the house
  21. Something to cook together that takes all afternoon
  22. Leave one half-day with nothing in itThis is the half-day people remember. Protect it from your own organising.
  23. Agree a meeting time for dinner, and let the day be free until then
  24. Check that the plan works for whoever cannot walk far
  25. Check that the plan works for the children, if there are any
  26. Have one evening idea that is not a bar
  27. Tell everyone the plan on the Friday night, once, out loud

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Questions people ask

How much should be planned in advance?
The things that need booking, and nothing else. A restaurant on the Saturday night, a boat, a tasting. Everything else is decided on the morning, by the people who are awake.
What do you do if it rains all weekend?
Have the wet plan ready before you go: a market town, a museum, a long lunch, a board game and a fire. The bad weekends are the ones where the only plan was outdoors and nobody had a second idea.