If you are a busy mum, dad, grandparent, childminder or any other carer of children, there’s a new app that will prove to be very useful.

Tiny Tours is a brilliant new app which helps parents and carers to explore Bristol with children, detailing family friendly events happening nearby, plus lists of places to visit and what you can expect to find there.

What’s more, the Tiny Tours App saves parents and carers both time and stress!

In today’s post on Bristol Mum is an interview with Laura and James Harris, the couple behind Tiny Tours.

Hi Laura and James, please tell readers a bit about yourselves.

For the majority of my week I’m a stay at home Mum to Joshua, 4 and Esther, 2. I enjoy finding interesting and fun things to do with them and meeting up with friends. I especially enjoy singing, the countryside and cake!

Before I had my children, I worked as a Primary School Teacher, since having them I work part-time with my husband, James at our business Blue Sparrow Apps, writing apps for mobile phones based at our office in South Bristol.

What was the inspiration behind the Tiny Tours app?

We were planning to go travelling with the children last summer around Spain and so I was planning our route and the places we would want to visit along the way.

One of the places was Valencia and I remember thinking how great it would be if there was an app I could download that would tell me the best places to visit with the children and how to get there. This got me thinking about my own city of Bristol where I’ve grown up and am now raising my own children.

It’s often easy to go to the same places as they’re what you know so the idea of having an app where perhaps you could find suggestions for new, interesting places to visit easily with your children was something I was keen to see.

In January of this year we won a competition hosted by Bristol City Council to find an innovative way to use bus data from across the city. This gave us the impetus to move Tiny Tours out of our heads and into reality.

Who is the Tiny Tours app primarily aimed at?

The app is primarily aimed for anyone who spends their time with children mainly aged 0-11years, be it parents, grandparents or childminders!

The majority of our users are Mums but we also know Dads and Grandparents find our app really helpful too.

How can it help parents in particular?

I think the main way it helps parents is that it takes the stress out of finding things to do with your children. On a Saturday morning, you can wake up, open up the app and your day is sorted for you!

There are interesting events happening near you and a list of places with information about what you can find there.

How does it work?

You are presented with two lists, one of events and one of places. There are filters so you can select places to visit using categories such as Rainy day, free or parks.

There are also events that are on that day. It will then give you the option to tell you how to get there by car or bus. It will work out your nearest bus stop and tell you the time the buses are coming that day.

Tiny Tours takes the pain out of planning a day or morning out with your children.

How can parents access the tiny Tours app? Does it cost?

It’s FREE! You can download it from the app store on your android or iPhone.

Is there anything else you would like to add?

We always love to get other people’s suggestions of places they like to visit with their children so if you have a good idea that you think other people should know about please get in touch using our Facebook page www.Facebook.com/TinyToursBristol