Road trip! Do you pass the time in the car like we do?

If you have a family road trip planned over the holidays, whether you’re heading to a much loved camping spot, visiting a relative, or exploring a new part of the UK, one thing can be guaranteed – you’re going to need some in-car entertainment to keep everyone happy!

So what do us Brits typically get up to while on the road? Well, BP Ultimate recently did some research to find out, quizzing over 2,000 UK motorists on what keeps things moving in the car.

Why BP? Well BP Ultimate with ACTIVE technology is a fantastic fuel designed to help clean and maintain your engine. It removes dirt to help keep your engine running smoothly, efficiently, and performing at its best. Perfect, then, for road trips.

So after collating everyone’s answers, BP found that us Brits have a lot in common when it comes to our favourite road trip activities – and some of the results might surprise you…

Tech

So are we a nation of people glued to phone and table screens while on the move? Happily, no!

While modern technology certainly has a place inside the car – it’s great to see that it didn’t rank as the go-to solution to in car boredom… or even the second choice… or third! Three other activities beat whipping out an electronic device – can you guess what they might have been?

At number one it’s…

Tunes

Our family definitely rank among over two thirds of UK drivers who feel listening to music is an integral park of a long car journey.

The winners of song most sung along to was Pharrell William’s smash hit Happy, which I know my own family find almost impossible not to belt out while of course accompanying it a wide array of our best dance moves.

Also making the list is Livin’ on a Prayer, which is easily one of the best songs in existence for taking a collective family breath before belting out the titular lyric, while us Brits like to sit back and relax to the likes of Ed Sheeran, Adele and Coldplay.

BP Ultimate also found out there are some bands and artists that people only sing along to on their own to save embarrassment: anything by Steps, The Carpenters and Celine Dion, apparently!

I’m not sure I agree with the last bit – as a parent I feel it’s my duty to sing along to any song no matter who’s in the car, or how embarrassed they may be either by or for me. In fact that’s all part of the fun *evil face*

Here’s the top 10 songs the UK loves to sing along to. How many are already on your road trip play list?

Chat

Ranking just below music is having a chat in the car. This is actually something I love about car journey – it gives you and your family uninterrupted family time, so it’s a brilliant opportunity to have a good natter about anything and everything under the sun.

We love taking it in turns to list what we’re looking forward to on the way to a trip destination, and then listing what we enjoyed most on the drive home.

Games

When you’ve got kids to entertain, no trip would be complete without playing some traditional games.

And I am delighted to see that high on to the list of top games us Brits love to play in the car are two of our personal favourites: name that tune and yellow car! I’m the current champion yellow car spotter, not to brag or anything.

There were also a couple of game we regularly play that didn’t make the list including the ‘numberplate game’, where you have to make a word that features the letters in a numberplate, and in the right order, which is tons of fun.

The other game is ‘horse’, where you guess how many horses you’ll see before the end of the journey – it can get surprisingly tense towards the end of the journey where you might be eagerly wishing for just one more horse to appear, or crossing your fingers that you’ve seen the last of them!

Of course, Mark and I wouldn’t dream of taking a detour just to see more horses before we arrive…

Snacks

Finally of course, there’s something near and dear to my heart: food.

Yep, us Brits love to pack the snack on journeys of all kinds, and we all know a yummy treat can calm tensions and delight even the most bored of adults and children alike.

BP found sixty percent of parents won’t leave home without a good supply of snacks, and one in five say they have even used food to diffuse arguments!  Top of the snack shopping list are…

Some of the more unusual car snacks named by participants included curry, gooseberries, trifle, beef jerky and even Scandinavian favourite, rollmop herrings!

I rarely get more experimental than a tupperware tin of savoury muffins so the list has inspired me to be more adventurous with what I pack for the next family roadtrip. Watch this space!

Ready for the road?

If all this has inspired you to get creative with the entertainment on your next trip, why not check out BPs Keep Britain Moving site for more inspiring games, fun in-car activities and even a Spotify playlist created by Renault Formula 1 team mates Nico Hülkenberg and Jolyon Palmer.

Have fun on your next adventure!

This is a commissioned post for BP.