Stories from
the road
(and beyond!)
How to boil a baby - and get them to sleep in a tent.
The back garden of an urban residence, especially your own, where you have neighbours to stay friends with for the longer-term, is a high-stakes place to take your baby camping for the first time they will remember. In fact, my distinct preference for such a trip is to be as far from the sight and sound of others as possible - in the wilds of Scotland worked nicely for the girls, and in Thomas Ivor’s case, it was a soggy field in mid-Wales. Campsites are less conducive to the objective, because on the one hand you want noisy neighbours so you’re not the people everyone’s glaring at in the morning, yet on the other, you want the little one to actually sleep.
Our guide to what you forgot to bring on your bike tour
This is the bit of the trip where I always think of the MacCallisters on their plane to Paris. We can be sure we've forgotten something - it's just a question of what, whether our guesses are right, and how severe it is.
Here we have the Family ByCycle guide to things you forgot, with apologies to Donald Rumsfeld...
Data, Data, Everywhere
We haven't decided if we want to pay the data charges in France, given that calls and texts are free on our contract, and in any event there is a good chance that data signal will be as scarce as WiFi. Hopefully, one or two of the places we are staying at will be able to help us out with some connectivity.
Power is everything
Inescapably, trying to take pictures and film, whilst using modern technology to navigate and sometimes to entertain the residents of the trailer, all uses power. We take it for granted at home and yet when we're on the road, whilst not life-or-death, it does become a preoccupation when battery levels are running low. We are always on the lookout for the next socket, and rationing our usage to match our charging expectations. Depending on the circumstances, it swaps places with food in the hierarchy of needs!
Lumbering Up
The trip, then, became a case of making a route up to fit between two fixed points and times, in a place I had scarcely visited, a language I do not speak, in the peak holiday season, with three children, one of whom, in Thomas Ivor's case, would be riding their own bike for the first time, on the other side of the road. Not much to go wrong there!