Road Trip.

It was time for our summer holiday. Were we going to a lovely sunny resort, flying off on a jet plane? No, we were going to Scarborough to see one of my favourite people, or peoples. From Devon seaside to Yorkshire seaside.

I’ve been to Scarborough often, and I took Xavier when he was a baby. We got the train then; the whole journey took 7 hours in total. Xavier and I were a bit crazy by the time we arrived and the entire train staff needed to be engaged to help with the ridiculous amount of stuff I’d packed. So this time I decided that I would drive; there was no way that Xavier would sit still on a train anymore.

According to an internet route planner it would take about six and a half hours to drive there. Who in their right mind would do that with a 2 ½ yr old? Well no one ever accuses me of being in her right mind. At first I thought I would stop off on the way and stay overnight, but when I looked into it, it would mean staying in a hotel attached to a motorway services somewhere like Tamworth and that didn’t sound like fun. After a bit of soul searching I decided to just do it all in one go. Our first proper road trip.

I was more worried about Xavier than I was doing the driving. It didn’t seem fair for him to be sat in a car seat for that long. My mother suggested (insisted) we get him a DVD to attach to the headrest. I’m not a huge fan of encouraging my child to watch TV but he loves it, (remember Girls of the Playboy Mansion), so as it would be just the two of us I though this indulgence would be best all round. After a bit of coercion from my mother.

And at least I haven’t got him a mobile phone or a games consol yet.

I packed up. It took me about 3 days and I ended up with most of my house in the car. Actually it was almost like moving house. I had every eventuality covered for Xav. His clothes (all of them), his toys (most of them), food, chair, travel cot, pushchair, books, everything I could fit in went in.

And despite having printed out the route I also put the address in the Sat Nav.

A word about Sat Navs. I don’t trust them. When I lived in London me and my girlfriends booked a cab to go to a party and the driver insisted on using his Sat NAv. It a Porn-star voice and despite my friends’ vociferous objections he followed her breathy instructions to the letter. Porn Sat Nav woman took us to a council estate in Tottenham, which clearly wasn’t our destination. And if you remember when I took mum on the Orient Express mine took me to a roundabout instead of the train station. But I decided to use it with my route planner as back up.

 My Sat Nav has school teacher voice, not porn, if you ignore her, even if you know she’s wrong you expect her to give you a detention. However the good news was that according to my Sat Nav the journey would only take 5 ½ hours which was an hour less than the planner.

So with a car full of all our belongings, a very happy child watching a DVD, and my school teacher Sat Nav directing us we set off on our holiday. Almost immediately school teacher woman got a bit ticked off with me because we have this new bridge (I think it’s been there for more than 5yrs), and the Sat Nav thinks you’re driving into the river; then I had to stop for petrol which annoyed my woman no end. So much so that when we set off after that she kept telling me to turn round, and when I looked it said we had only ten minutes left of our journey. Seeing as we’d only been going for ten minutes I think she’d given up and tried to go home. So I had to stop again to reset her. Then we set off yet again.

It wasn’t until I joined the motorway that I realised my passenger wing mirror was in. Either I hadn’t noticed and set off like that (surely not), or it had been knocked in when I stopped for petrol. It made motorway driving was dangerous as I couldn’t see to my left. So I pulled off to the first services to sort it. Sat nav woman didn’t like that either. Honestly did she need to be so stern? I’ve never felt so chastised in my life.

Anyway, after three stops before we’d even driven for an hour we were properly on our way. We stopped off for lunch after a couple of hours. The motorway service place was packed. Frighteningly so. We queued for over half an hour to get something to eat. Xav spent the whole time trying to run off, and I had my huge handbag (no one can accuse me of travelling light) and him to juggle. It was a little stressful but we managed and were fed and ready to continue our journey.

This time there was no DVD as it was time for Xav to have a nap. So I put his story CD on (quite weird story about a magic porridge bowl and a greedy woman who manages to flood her entire village with porridge), which sent Xav to sleep but not me or my Sat nav friend.

Before I knew it we had reached the end of our motorway driving and were on an ‘A’ road toward York. We were nearly there. Xavier woke up and I thought I ought to warn my friend we were close so I pulled into a lay-by and called her. I also set up the DVD for the last leg of the journey.

Within an hour we were there. The Sat Nav actually got us to the door this time.

As you know I often fell a bit pleased with myself when I do something that I never really thought I would but in just over five hours, (not counting stoppages), I had driven from Devon to Scarborough which was pretty good. My boy had been a dream passenger and not complained once. It all worked out brilliantly.

My friend and her two daughters greeted us excitedly. Then they all looked at the car.

‘How long are you staying Auntie Faith?’ one of the girls asked. My friend looked a little scared.

‘Yeah because it looks like you might be moving in,’ the other added before I could reply.