Surviving a road trip

UK – France – UK

I wanted to share my experience of a long road trip with two children under 5; I was scared shitless to be honest so I (probably) overprepared! Here are a few things we did to help us survive:

1. Scheduled long stints of drives at bedtime/night-time:

a. Our first stint was Bristol to Folkestone (4 hours) – we did bath time routine, popped them in their PJs and transferred them to a hotel bed next to the euro-tunnel.

b. Our drive back from Folkestone to Bristol (4 hours) – we scheduled a 9pm Eurotunnel from France so we drove from 10pm to 2am (this was hard going but the kids slept soundly and transferred to bed).

My two pretending they were going to sleep.

2. Route planning

a. Check out stops along the way to break up the journey.

b. Opportunities for small people to stretch their legs are key.

Tip: We went to Mont St. Michel & you can either walk there or take a bus. I would always advocating the walk because its stunning and only about 1.5 miles.

3. Roofbox

a. SO. MUCH. STUFF. Why do they have so much stuff? Just a pram fills up the boot of our large SUV so the roofbox was very handy and allowed us to be much more flexible with what we took and allowed us to save money because we could buy things like drinks and snacks in bulk for the journey.

b. Look at rental roofboxes and not just buying them. We rented one for a week and it worked out to around £80-90. Buying one was around £600 so we opted for a rental because we didn’t know if it would be useful!

4. Screens, screens, screens

a. Controversial but this is where I think unlimited screen access is OK in this scenario. Screen quality is so much more important than time in this era because it is inevitable, in the age of ubiquitous computing, screens are everywhere.

Apps we love: Reading Eggs, Cbeebies, Monster letters, Netflix (oh no), Disney+ (oh no) and unfortunately, kids youtube (sorry guys, I know you will groan at the one) .

b. Rookie error – I didn’t buy headphones for them, so it was so annoying to hear Vampirina on repeat for many hours. BUY CHILDRENS HEADPHONES (with volume limiters).

c. Ipad holders for the car seat – we found these so useful. Our one and half year old always tries to tap tap tap on the ipad and changes the app and cries (come on girl, seriously?!) and our five year old liked being able to watch the ipad whilst drawing or doing lego. Another pro – no sticky fingers on screens after hours of snack eating. We used this one but sure there are alternatives out there: click here

5. Snacks

a. This one is KEY and it’s a money saver. Snacks at service stations are spendy and quite unhealthy.

b. We loaded a cool bag so we could take a big variety. We stayed in some self-catering places so we could put the cool packs in the freezer but sure you could ask hotels to put them in the freezers.

c. Things we packed:

• Multipacks of juice and capri-suns

• 2 bunches of bananas (this sounds like loads but we all ate them and its surprising how they disappear)

• Apples

• Multipacks of crisps

• Multipacks of small packets of raisins

• Sweets (what road trip is complete without some sweets)

• Little chocolate brioches

• Dried fruit

• Dairy lea dunkers

• Babybels

6. Trays

a. Trays are so amazing and so important. I bought one specifically for the car but I think any tray would do. We used them for colouring, lego and for putting food on when they were eating.

b. This one was great but honestly, any tray would do! Click here

7. Zip-lock bags of toys

a. We did little zip-lock bags of toys like legos, little characters and stickle bricks. This keeps it varied and you can whip them out randomly to renew interest.

b. Zip-lock bags are good and easy to pick up. But I really like these waterproof hard wearing plastic bags I got off amazon – I use them for EVERYTHING. Click here

8. A good flexible attitude

a. Its going to be a bit mental in the car so just go with it; sing songs, play games and accept that they’re going to eat too many snacks and generally be a bit annoying.

b. Always build in 2-3 hours extra for whatever you need to do because you will have to stop for 10000000 wees.