Travel Board Games For Fun Trips Away

Whenever Dave & I pack Lexi van ready for a motorhome road trip, we always include a couple of travel board games. As much as we love our tech gadgets, we also love non-tech nights where we read or play a game. With so much entertainment available on our TVs, laptops, tablets and mobiles it’s important to remember to stay connected with each other.

We love game nights in our motorhome. We crack open a bottle of wine, crank up the tunes with a Spotify playlist on our Boom 3 wireless speaker, grab some snacks and set up a travel board game. Things soon liven up with plenty of banter as our competitive streak kicks in, especially if Dave’s winning (grrrrrrrr!). 🙂

Sponsored: Below is a review of two travel board games that were gifted by Jaques of London. This is an honest review and all opinions are our own.

Jaques Of London

A couple of months ago I shared a blog post listing our favourite travel board games and in particular the handmade, wooden games from Jacques of London. I really like the deluxe range of wooden travel board games and I’m keen to collect more of these to take away in our motorhome.

Related Post: 10 Travel Board Games

Following on from my 10 travel board games post, the lovely guys at Jaques of London kindly sent me two of the travel board games I’d listed for me to try out and review. What a lovely surprise, thank you so much. So last week we set off on a van trip to Suffolk and I packed the ‘Score 4 (Four in a Row)’, and ‘Chinese Checkers‘ to play in our motorhome one evening.

Presentation

My first impressions were of surprise at the fabulous packaging and presentation. The travel board games are beautifully presented in a slim and sturdy box with a Jaques of London ribbon. I love the simple but stylish design of the box, this would make a lovely gift for family or friends.

The board game is wrapped in a delightful vintage looking tissue paper (see photos below). You really get a sense of the care and attention that has gone into designing and wrapping these board games.

Also tucked inside the tissue paper is a handwritten card telling you which of the Jaques of London team has wrapped your board game. I like this personalised touch, which again makes it feel like a quality special gift. This is a company that is clearly passionate about creating handcrafted, handmade items from the packaging right through to the end product. Best of all… no plastic!

So what are they like to play?

Deluxe Score 4 (Four in a Row)

The wooden box that holds the game and discs is about the size of a paperback book. This makes it a perfect travel board game for taking away on holiday or on road trips in a motorhome, camper van, RV or caravan. The game packs away neatly inside the box and won’t take up too much space in your luggage or van storage cupboard.

It’s lightweight but feels strong enough to withstand plenty of handling and playing time. The board opens up on hinges and sits in the base ready to play. There are 36 wooden discs in two colours (red and black). The discs are very smooth, they fit neatly into the slots at the top of the board game and slide down easily as you play.

The rules of this board game are simple. Players take it in turns to drop the wooden discs into the top of the board game, players must get four in a row of their colour discs either horizontally, vertically or diagonally to win the game. 

Once the game is over simply pull the lever at the bottom of the board and all the discs will slide down into the tray ready to play again. This is a fun, easy game anyone can play. If you’re anything like us this soon gets competitive and it gives your brain a good work out as you strategically think through and plan each move. Dave is currently ahead on the number of wins on this game, damn him, but I’ll soon sort that out 🙂

Chinese Checkers

This is a board game neither Dave or I had played before, so the first thing we did was to grab the game instructions sheet provided. The aim of the game and rules were easy to read and understand so it wasn’t long before we were set up and playing our first game.

The Jaques of London Chinese Checkers set includes a solid great quality circular wooden board handcrafted from beautiful timber. There are 60 glossy coloured wooden pegs (10 per player). This classic board game is for 2, 3, 4 or 6 players. Each player has ten pegs of one colour at one starting point of the star. The objective of this game is to move all your pegs to the opposite star point on the board from where you start. The first to move all their pegs to the opposite star point wins the game.

This was an easy game to play, however I would say that the pegs are a little small so may be fiddly for those with larger fingers or hands. We enjoyed playing this game to unwind after a busy few days away. Sometimes you just need a ‘no-screens’ night and a relaxing game that doesn’t take hours to play (I’m not a monopoly fan).

Summary

We love our new travel board games, they are perfect to take away in our motorhome for games nights in the van. We shall definitely be packing these on future road trips around the UK and Europe.

Both games are quick and easy to learn with the help of the instruction sheets. They are simple fun games that everyone can enjoy. Beautifully presented and quick to set up and pack away. The presentation boxes are really handy to store the games in when travelling.

There are lots of games available in the range that would be great for travelling with and they make great gifts for family and friends too. I shall be adding more of these to my birthday / christmas wishlist 🙂

Although this post is focusing on the Travel Board Games available from Jaques of London, this is not their primary audience. They have a vast array of Children’s Toys and Games with a large portion of their website dedicated to the fun and educational games, designed with the help of teachers.

The UK is seeing a huge increase in demand for motorhomes, camper vans and caravan. As more families choose the van life for safer holidays I’m sure they’d love to discover this deluxe range of wooden travel board games. Less screen time, more family time. Less plastic by using FSC Approved Timber Wood games. I’d love to see this being reflected in future Jaques of London social media marketing posts.

Where to Buy

There are lots of beautiful handcrafted wooden board games available in this range. We rather like:

• Travel Board Games
• Garden Games – we love taking our Quoits away with us to play on campsites. Great way to meet other campers.
• Deluxe Portable Puzzle Board – for jigsaw fans this travel board holds a 1000 piece puzzle

There are Amazon affiliate links in this post, which if used may result in Touring Tales earning a small fee, at no extra cost to you. We really appreciate your support by using these links to help us run this travel and book blog to bring you lots of free content. xxx

Touring Tales special discount offer

Fancy 15% off your first order? Of course you do! Go grab this great discount using our special Touring Tales offer. No code needed just follow our link.

About Jaques of London

Having played and reviewed two of the Jaques of London travel board games, I thought it would be interesting to find out a little more about this company.

I was pleasantly surprised to read that Jaques of London is an eighth generation family business, which has been inventing and making toys and games since 1795! Jaques have been responsible for inventing many well known games, such as Croquet, Ping Pong, Snakes and Ladders, Ludo, Tiddledy Winks and more.

I was also excited to learn that the founder, Thomas Jaques, was of French Huguenot descent, a family heritage that I also share with my family name of Lamude.

You can find out more about the history of Jaques of London here.

Visit Jaques of London Amazon Shop

Visit the Jaques of London Amazon Shop for wooden toys, board games, garden games, jigsaws and accessories.

Which game will you choose?

I hope you found this Jaques of London Travel Board Games review useful. Which game will you choose? Share your favourite board games in the comments below.

Happy travelling

Miche xxx