OUR KIDS LIFE IN FRANCE, AND OURS - welcome to the vendee

A good nights sleep was not on the menu, as it turned out. I usually get the pleasure of seeing the kids over excited at Christmas and Birthdays, but this was a night with all 5 of us squashed into a room no bigger than a bathroom. Really, you could do everything without moving from the bed, even take a shower if you tried hard enough! OK, so it was cheap & cheerful, and it was one of those motorway hotels, but I would have called that more like a room for 1 not 5. Whatever, (there's that word again!). The children thought it was a hoot, and giggled all night. They found it especially amusing when we had to climb over one another to get to the loo, so much so that they felt the need to go at least 10 times in 30 minutes. Granted it was hot outside, even at that time of night, but the air conditioning was loud and clonky, and it gave you that funny sort of taste in your mouth. So we turned it right down. Then we still couldn't sleep as it was too hot. "Are we there yet?", didn't sound too bad at that point.

We were up and dressed at the crack of dawn, obviously, and in consequence, had to wait 1/2 an hour for the breakfast buffet to open, (I can't do anything without my daily caffeine intake). By 7.30am we were back on the road again.

Having done the longer part of the journey the day before, we figured we only had a couple of hours left on route, but decided to take it easy to make sure mum would be up and running and ready for us. Fortunately for us the kids slept alot of the way, not all but alot, so there is something to be said for motorway hotels after all! A few toll gates, hours and "are we there yets" later we finally rolled, (literally, we were almost out of petrol), through mums gates. She rushed out to greet us all with hugs. There it was again. That feeling of security. The same one I had when dad had rushed out 5 years previously........

OUR KIDS LIFE IN FRANCE, AND OURS, are we there yet?

Just as we got back on the road our son said, "are we there yet?", we were only 15 minutes out of the village and not even on the motorway! I felt a headache coming on.

It was a long journey and as it was the beginning of the afternoon we decided to stop over night in a hotel, but we wanted to get past the half way mark first. We hoped the removal guys wouldn't get there before us as they would need our help to unload, but doubted they would considering the route they took.

About an hour into the trip we stopped at a service station for a "loo stop", again. "Make sure you all go because we don't want to have to stop again!", I warned them. They all went in but I'm still not sure is they actually did the business. We set off again. "Are we there yet?", our daughter said, "not even a quarter of the way, read a book or something." I said. I had forgotten that we had Elephant the hamster in the car with us, and about a half an hour after that I kept hearing strange noises. "There's something wrong with the car.", I said to my husband in a panic. He agreed he'd heard the same noises, so we pulled over yet again. We left the engine running and checked under the bonnet, under the car, at the front, at the back but could not find anything wrong. It wasn't until we checked inside that we found Elephant doing somersaults off the top of her cage and running round in circles chasing a tail that didn't exist! "Had you asked me I would have told you it was just the hamster!", our eldest said.

Each time we stopped at a toll gate somebody asked, "are we there yet?", and each time I replied the same, "I'll let you know when we're nearly there, now go to sleep or something!", but they kept on asking. What a relief when we finally arrived at the hotel, at about 7pm. All tired with sore bottoms, and hot, it was very hot. We called mum to let her know where we were, and then went to the bar for a well deserved glass of, well, anything alcoholic, really, and then a good meal. I'm sure we'd all feel better after a good nights sleep.....