September 16, 2026 Post by : Editorial Rainy Day Adventures

Picnics are supposed to be a summer thing. Blue sky, checkered blanket, a slightly warm sausage roll. But some of our best family meals outside have happened in the rain, huddled under a big umbrella or a tarpaulin stretched between two trees, passing crisps back and forth while the drops tap away above us.

The trick is to stop treating rain as a cancellation and start treating it as a different kind of picnic. You are not recreating a July afternoon. You are creating a small, cosy pocket of dry in the middle of a wet walk, and that changes everything.

Packing for a Wet Picnic

Forget delicate food. This is a picnic for weather that does not care about your plans. Think flask of soup, crusty bread, cheese, apples, flapjack and a bar of chocolate that you do not mind being slightly squashed. Hot drinks in a good flask are the single biggest upgrade you can make. A warm cup of something in your hands while the rain falls is a genuinely lovely feeling.

Take a waterproof picnic mat or a couple of bin bags to sit on. A tarp is even better if you have one, because you can rig it as a roof using a fence, a gate or two sturdy branches. Keep it simple. You are not building a campsite, just a dry patch roughly the size of a bath towel.

Bring one big umbrella rather than several small ones. A large golf umbrella held low creates a surprisingly effective shelter for two or three people, and it doubles as a windbreak. If your children are small, they will happily sit underneath it like a little tent while you pass out the sandwiches.

Where to Stop

Look for natural shelter. The lee side of a hedge, a dense evergreen tree, a bus stop, a bandstand or a stone wall all work. The goal is not perfection. It is a spot where the rain is slowed down enough that you can eat without wearing your lunch.

Choose a place with a view if you can. A bench overlooking a river, a log at the edge of a wood, a quiet corner of a park. The rain adds atmosphere. Mist on the hills, drips from leaves, the smell of wet earth. It is genuinely beautiful, and children notice it when they are warm and fed.

Keep the picnic short. Fifteen or twenty minutes is plenty. The point is the pause, not the endurance. Then pack up, tuck everything back in the bag, and carry on with the walk. You will all feel a bit more human for having stopped.

Rainy picnics are not a compromise. They are their own thing, and once your family gets the hang of them, you might find you look forward to the grey days a little more.

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