Since Adlai was born any car journey can feel like a great expedition into the unknown. Sometimes just getting to TESCO can prove an ordeal and a glaring advert for online shopping. If I ever say I’m just ‘popping to the shops’, I’m lying. It’s impossible to ‘pop’ anywhere these days. The best thing to do is to embrace the change and just accept my ‘popping’ days are behind me.
With the sun breaking through the clouds for a few seconds at least, I loaded my family and the majority of our worldly processions in our car last week, and we headed for the coast.
According to Google and my worryingly clever smart phone the journey should have taken us a little over 2 hours. So the new non-popping me figured that with a good tail wind it would take us about 4 hours with stops, plus another 2 to load the car and get everybody out of the house. The nice thing about the additional stops is that you get to see places that you would normally (for good reason) just drive straight through. Most of the towns we stopped in had very little notability and looking back they all seem to merge into one. The only thing I remember about one of the towns was that it had free parking. Not the most exciting pull for a towns tourist board but I remember being pleasantly surprised.
Parking prices became a small obsession for me over the holiday. For some reason it doesn’t sit right with me to pay £5 to park at a beach. In true Dad fashion I drove around the back streets until I could find a free space and usually I did. Sure we walked an hour to get to the beach and had to buy £10 worth of refreshments to energise a weary family, but I still felt like I was sticking it to the man. On one occasion where we did pay for parking the sea was so far out we barely made it half way across the beach before it was time to turn back.
You’ll be relieved to hear that we did have some non-parking related adventures too. There’s so much to tell you about; beaches, coffee vans and caravans. Seriously more fun than you could shake a star fish at. This could keep me going for weeks.
