Dad’s View - First Trip for Christmas
It was decided that we should take
our lovely 3 month old up to
Scotland to visit my family for
Christmas. A 500+ mile trip that has
been done before on several
occasions with minimum fuss.
Hey this should be a doddle right?
First we need to work out the
logistics. Do we go for the full 12 hour
journey in the car in one trip or do
we split it over two days? Maybe we
can fly?
Flying isn’t really an option as it
seems that, even to go out for the
day, you have to take a truck load
of baby stuff just in case of an
emergency, so driving it is.
It seemed like splitting it over two
days and stopping over at a hotel at
a service station was the most
sensible idea. So we booked a hotel
in Carlisle as that was approximately
halfway. It was planned that I would
take a half day, return home after
work, quickly load the car and aim
to leave around 15:00 to enable us
to reach Carlisle around 19:00. This
would allow us to get some dinner
and settle down for the night.
I got home from work and started
packing the car. Who knew this
would take so long? After all it was
only the three of us going for a
week. Case after case and bag
NCT Newbury & District
after bag appeared. How can a 3
month old need so many cases?
Eventually we got packed and we
were only about an hour behind
schedule. Off we headed
northward bound towards the M5
and M6. It seemed that hitting the
M5 and traveling north at around
17:00 might have been a little bit of
an oversight. We hit road works on
the M5, average speed checks 50
MPH, but the traffic was still moving we may still get there and the plans
might not be too out. Before long it
was decided that we should stop at
a service station for dinner/ feed
and change the baby. We parked
up at the services and decided to
use the family room to change the
baby. After which, we decided to
find somewhere that we could eat
and mum could feed the baby.
We hid ourselves in the corner so
that baby could be fed - as new
parents you always seem to be
scared that someone would be
offended by the sight of a baby
being fed.
Finally we got back on the road
(only 2.5 hours behind schedule).
Stopping seemed to be a bit of a
godsend as it meant that we
reached Birmingham towards the
end of the rush hour. We travelled
up the M6, baby sleeping in the car,
slightly concerned that, as he was
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