01 Have one indoor anchor
The wet day that goes wrong is the one with no fixed point. Pick one indoor thing that will definitely happen, put it in the middle of the day, and improvise around it.
In Exeter the Royal Albert Memorial Museum is the obvious anchor and holds children for longer than its size suggests, because the subject changes every few rooms. The Underground Passages work for older children who like a bit of atmosphere. Libraries, pools and cinemas fill the rest, and all of them change their arrangements often enough that a quick check before setting out is worth the minute it takes.
Further out, Bovey Tracey has both the House of Marbles and the Devon Guild of Craftsmen within a short walk of each other, which makes a good half day when the moor is under cloud. Buckfast Abbey has enough covered ground to absorb a wet hour.
02 Wet walks worth doing anyway
Some walks are better in the rain, and children mind it far less than adults do once they are properly dressed. A river in spate is a genuine spectacle. Woodland shelters more than people expect. The estuary in poor weather is emptier and the birds are closer.
The canal towpath south from Exeter Quay is flat, sheltered in stretches and easy to abandon at any point, which makes it a reliable wet weather option rather than a heroic one.
Keep the ambition small. Forty minutes out and a hot drink at the end is a successful wet walk. Two hours is how children learn to dislike walking.
03 The kit that changes everything
Waterproof trousers are the single item that transforms wet weather with children, and they are the item nobody buys. A coat keeps the top half dry and the child still ends up soaked and miserable from the knees down.
After that: wellingtons that fit, a spare pair of socks in the bag, and a towel in the car. That is the whole list, and it costs less than one wet afternoon at a paid attraction.
Keep a set in each house. It belongs on the duplication list in small habits that steady a shared week, because wet weather kit is exactly the sort of thing that is always in the other hallway.
04 When staying in is the right answer
Sometimes the honest plan is to stay in, and it is worth doing that deliberately rather than as a failure. A day indoors with a project has a shape. A day indoors with a vague intention to go out later does not.
Baking, a long game, a jigsaw left out on a side table, a film in the afternoon with the curtains shut: these are the makings of a day a child remembers well. The screen half of it is dealt with sensibly in screen time that works in two homes.
The one thing to avoid is spending the morning watching the forecast. It changes nothing and it makes everyone restless. Decide by ten o'clock and commit.
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