On the Road

A month since my last blog post. I bet you were starting to wonder whether my motivation had waned and that was the last you would hear from me? Well, not exactly. The truth is that, having been in the UK for the past month or so, travelling around visiting family, friends and Alex when we can, I found there was not much of interest to be writing about. The last thing I want to do is bore people with tales of hours spent in hotels, Airbnbs and hire cars, unless there is some purpose to these tales. So, now that this period has come to an end, it feels like a natural time to reflect back upon it and put pen to paper, as it were.

The children's first ever Junior Parkrun, in Peckham Rye Park with Grandpop!

As mentioned in my last post, I managed to organise some longer visits to stay with both mine and Alex's family, and these periods were invaluable for providing both myself and the children with some rest, relaxation and stability. I was able to get back into a nice routine with homeschooling, and made the most of being in London by taking the children on a "school trip" to the Natural History Museum, with Alex's mum. The children and I were also able to show off some of our new (albeit slightly underwhelming) cookery skills acquired in Turkey, making gözleme (Turkish pancakes), kısır (a Turkish salad with bulgar wheat) and elmali kurabiye (Turkish apple cookies) for anyone willing to try them. To be honest, none of these dishes taste anywhere near as good when cooked by me as they did when Hatice made them in Turkey, but I am improving every time and it is fun to practise them.

Making Turkish apple cookies for Uncles Ben and Ash

After a few weeks of said stability, I picked up another hire car from Stansted Airport and began driving around the country again, visiting Alex and seeing friends, staying in cheap hotels in between. Unfortunately, the Navy doesn't always give Alex much notice of weekend leave during this initial training period, which made it rather difficult to plan when we could see him. We were unexpectedly allowed a weekend with him after he had spent a gruelling week on Dartmoor, and we stayed near Brixham in a lovely Airbnb on a golf course. We spent an afternoon doing a detective mystery style Treasure Trail in Brixham. This was the first time we've done one of these trails, and we thoroughly enjoyed it. We downloaded and printed the booklet in the library, followed the clues around the old town and harbour, eliminating suspects to discover who committed the crime (in this case, the murder of a fisherman). It was a really great way of exploring the town and definitely worth the £9.99 that we paid for it.

Another Junior Parkrun; this time in Paignton with Dad!

On the Sunday morning, we headed to Paignton where the children did Junior Parkrun, before heading to the local Wetherspoons for a well-deserved full English breakfast. Afterwards, we walked to the seafront and took a stroll along the pier, where I changed £1 each for the children into 2p pieces and they experienced arcade machines for the first time. Unfortunately, I didn't really explain to Zach properly how the machine worked, so he was under the false impression that he was definitely going to get the little dinosaur toy out of his machine, which was teetering at the edge of the pile of 2p pieces. However, despite us putting all his coins in, as well as a few more which did get pushed out, the dinosaur toy stayed put, ready to entice another hopeful punter to feed the machine with some 2p pieces. Poor little Zach cried his heart out, then his disappointment turned to anger and he declared that next time he would not put his money in that machine but would save it and buy a toy in the shop. I was impressed; at just 4 years old, he has learned a very important life lesson about the perils of gambling! Let's hope he remembers that lesson throughout his life.

Beth and Zach were very impressed with this Lego model
of the Titanic, in the SeaCity Museum

Some bad planning on my part meant that, after this weekend in Devon, we had a long drive back to Surrey to visit Zach's godfather and his family mid-week. I made the most of the journey by also visiting some friends in Southampton en route, as well as taking the children to the SeaCity museum in Southampton, which was not far from our Ibis Budget hotel. We spent hours in the very informative Titanic exhibition there, where we learned a great deal about the ship, her crew and the disaster which befell them all. Whilst with our friends in Surrey, we attended a morning Forest School session, which both the children very much enjoyed. Ordinarily, during periods of extensive travel, it is very hard to make time for schooling, so it was great that during this week we found time for a couple of good schooling sessions, before driving all the way back down to Dartmouth to see Alex for a few short hours over the weekend. We didn't get much time with him, but managed to squeeze in a trip on the Kingswear to Paignton steam railway!

We enjoyed our ride on this steam train, as well as a picnic of scones and cream!

The following week we were due to fly back to Portugal from Bristol airport on the Wednesday morning... quite good planning on my part to reduce our mileage, except plans were scuppered by the fact that Zach's passport took almost a month to be returned by the passport office! It finally arrived on the Friday before our final weekend with Alex, but I decided that I didn't want to risk getting it posted to Bristol with Royal Mail, with so little time before our flight. So, just to make full use of the unlimited mileage allowance on our hire car, we drove all the way back to south-east London on the Monday afternoon, and then back to Bristol again Tuesday afternoon. I was certainly glad to return the hire car at 4am on the Wednesday morning before our early flight to Faro, and be done with driving for a while!

Beth and Zach made me a delicious Mother's Day breakfast!

Whilst I do generally love a good road trip, I find that extended travelling in the car with the children is not my favourite way to spend time, especially in the UK in the winter. On our road trip of 2021 from the UK to Portugal, we were able to stay in our tent most of the time, and save a lot of money on accommodation costs by doing so. In the UK in March, this is just not practical, and the alternative is either staying with friends and family or forking out a massive amount of money on hotels and Airbnbs. It is almost impossible to find a cheap room for the night these days, and I am usually paying £50-100 per night for a room. 

Enjoying the very realistic Tyrannosaurus Rex
at the Natural History Museum 

Another challenge of being on the road a lot (as any lorry or van driver will tell you) is eating healthily whilst doing so. When staying with friends, this is not such an issue, but hotels rarely provide many facilities for meal preparation and, whilst an Airbnb often does, it is difficult to plan meals such that you aren't left carting around a load of leftover ingredients. We manage as best we can, snacking on fruit and vegetables in the car and in hotel rooms, and planning simple meals such as jacket potatoes in Airbnbs, but it is far from ideal and I often feel rather unhealthy and lethargic after extended periods of travelling in this manner.

An evening meal in our budget hotel room in Southampton

Finally, homeschooling is difficult when on the road for any length of time. After one weekend with Alex, we had to checkout of our Airbnb by 10am and could not arrive to our next destination before 4pm, so we had plenty of time to kill in between. I headed for a large Tesco Extra and we got breakfast in their large yet rather empty cafe, which we then stayed in for a good few hours doing homeschooling whilst nursing a coffee and some babyccinos. Thank goodness, when we eventually left, I checked the car park and found there was no time limit to parking there, as there sometimes is these days! So, by making the most of opportunities to study as they arise, as well as planning in some activities such as museum trips along the way, it is possible to homeschool on the road, but it is certainly not easy and takes a good deal of discipline and effort.

Having fun in the mud kitchen at a Forest School session

All in all, whilst being on the road for a couple of weeks gave us the flexibility to visit Alex when the opportunity arose, and to visit other friends along the way, I wouldn't want to do a similar road trip again anytime soon. I mean, sure, I enjoyed listening to almost the entire 15 hours of the Chronicles of Narnia on Audible as much as the children did, and Costa Drive Thru has revolutionised my service station stops but, despite these positives, I just don't like living out of a car and being forced to spend money on unhealthy food and overpriced accommodation. Going forward, I need to think a little more carefully about time spent in the UK and how we can minimise our travel there but, for now, back in Portugal, I can just forget about travelling for a while and enjoy topping up my vitamin D levels again.

Bridge building, after a swim in the river in my parents' valley