A family of five on a gap year tour of the UK in a motor home sharing our experiences of traveling together, and the ideas and foundations behind our daily decisions. We will post about UK travel destinations, Positive Discipline, unschooling, ecological living, Christianity, faith & children, and home cooking in a small space.
I woke up this morning in a PANIC – when
we’re staying at my parents’ shortly, we’ll only have 2 MONTHS left to go...
ARRGH, how am I going to cope.
But that’s for a future post..
Today is all about transport.
Firstly, there’s Lucia, our trustworthy
motorhome. I am very grateful that James is a practical kind of guy – as the
motorhome made a strange noise as we were driving here to Essex... “Hmmm –
gugrly gurgly that sounds like mumble mumble pipe. A few minutes later –
yes, definitely.. Hang on a second – we’ll just pull over”.. So pull over we
did, and he stuck his head under the bonnet, got me to rev the engine a few
times, reattached something, and it all sounded a lot better.
Turns out the air inlet pipe into the
engine popped off. Something to do with giving an engine extra power (turns out
that air makes fuel combust to move some pistons to make your car move – yes
seriously I didn’t know that until I just googled it).
Secondly, we have our bikes. We like
using them as much as possible, and in particular when it’s not too hilly!! I
have Myriam on a trailer bike, and everyone else travels under their own steam.
We started off the year with Myriam in a car seat, and were very grateful when
Steve and Jenny in Norfolk lent us a trailer bike – means I’m not just heaving
around an extra 20 kilos but we can convert some of her chemical energy into
mechanical energy too. When we’re on a campsite, or going for a walk
somewhere, then Myriam sometimes uses her balance bike. So earlier this week we
spent the day with Andy exploring Hylands park, and all 3 kids rode their
bikes, giving us the chance to catch up on the last almost 15 years of Andy and
our families’ respective lives.
Yesterday, we went to visit the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park, which was amazing, and we went to take a look inside
the velodrome. We noticed a group of young children gathering inside the
central area for a balance bike lesson, and Myriam wanted to join them.
Although it was fully booked, one child didn’t turn up, and so Myriam took
their place. After a few group balance/co-ordination games, everyone was
kitted up and off they went. It was a very relaxed lesson – Rory, the teacher,
would come over to each child and adapt to their needs/level. After a few
minutes, I asked if Myriam could try a bike with pedals – so Rory watched her
balance bike skills, and was happy she could try. He gave her a couple of
starting techniques, and off she went (duck to water is the wrong analogy but
she was totally confident – the combination of balance bike plus trailer bike
over the last few months gave her the skills she needed, and she just stuck the
two together effortlessly, no holding of the seat while you run along beside
the child needed 😊 )
Next on the list is our legs – we walk
LOTS.. Today we’ve been to explore a nature reserve, yesterday we walked the
length of the Queen Elizabeth park, the day before was a self-guided walk
around the City of London finding out about the Roman town of Londinium.
James gave me a Misfit (step counter) for Christmas, and I am highly motivated
to get it flashing all the colours of the rainbow as I hit my 11,000 steps for
the day. (Yes, I’ve been known to walk around the motorhome brushing my teeth
last thing at night, and then run on the spot, just to get the last few hundred
in). We definitely want to find ways of keeping walking in our kids lives
when we move back to Gennevilliers. It’s only a 45 min walk to/from school, so
I’m hoping to use leg power for the return journey (we used our car last year –
which after a 7 hour day at school does make sense in terms of 3 year old
energy levels, but it doesn’t exactly sit comfortably with our caring for
creation ethos).
And then there are the various forms of
public transport we have used. Bus, tram, underground, rail, each one is an
opportunity for us to explore a part of the bit of world we’re living in. Our
favourite bus journey has probably been the Double decker from Canterbury to
Dover castle – beautiful countryside, great views, and much easier than trying
to take the motorhome. When we’re booking a campsite for a longer stay,
access to public transport is key – it means that we can get around and
explore. The only place we didn’t really manage that was while staying on
Mull – although there were some buses that went past the campsite, the
timetable didn’t make that clear, and there were no bus stop signs anywhere –
you had to just know where to stand.
I mustn’t forget that we have also used a few ferries, which we loved, and planes – when Nathanael and I went from Edinburgh to Guildford in early
February for a couple of days, it was about a third of the price, and half the
time, to fly. As a family, we made a decision several years ago to only fly to
places where we had friends or family, so this flight fitted into the criteria.
At the end of the year we’ll be
calculating, as best we can, our total carbon emissions, to offset them using
Climate Stewards. My friend Ingrid introduced us to them a while ago, (as a side story, that’s how we first found out about A Rocha, a "Christian charity working for the protection and restoration of the natural world" that we are involved with in France. )
Here is a video of the battle of Hastings of course I don't mean that I went back to the 11th century and took a video safely standing on a hill!!! Now you know what I mean!
(article in progress, come back soon!!) We are coming to the end of 4 days in Copenhagen, and we have loved exploring the sights playgrounds of this lovely city. Lesson learned the hard way yesterday...our kids are very happy when they are playing, less happy when they are being tourists, even when touristing involved getting a harbour boat bus to go visit the citadel. And who can blame them, the legepladsz (see, we have even learnt the Danish for playground, although spelling might be a bit dodgy) are Fantastic. So here's a guided tour of a few mostly recommended by our local lovely hostess, Luna. First we visited her in Naestved, and went to the park 5 minutes from her house.. a slide built into a hill,a basketball/multi sports court, some swings. ..so far, so normal. But instead of the usual climbing frame, there were a series of wooden horses to climb on, under, over, between and slide down from. It was great to watch the boys figure out how they were going to use
This trip was never really about sight-seeing, but back in Spring 2017 we decided that if we were going to go travelling for a year it would be a good idea to know where to go. In one of our now infamous family meetings we brain-stormed the places we would like to go during our year of travels. The resulting list was a combination of places the kids had heard of, places we'd been to as kids, places we'd never been to as kids, and fish. The Atack-opoly board was produced to metaphorically set our target destinations in stone and ever since we set off it has guided our choices of destination. As I write this we are currently staying on the Isle of Wight, and combined with Laura's trip to the Tower of London with the kids last week we have now collected all the properties on our board. So job done, we can all go home. Except that this list was always more or less just for guidance rather than being a firm plan. We will indeed go home sooner rather than later - the Eu
Love the idea of Myriam learning to ride a bike at THE velodrome! Maybe see you when you are back in Guildford. Love to you all, Susanna and co
ReplyDelete