11 years of travel with a child

It’s another milestone birthday for you, my lovely girl – while last year marked a whole decade of you being in my life, this year spells the end of your time at primary school and the next steps towards becoming a teenager and an adult yourself.

Not that you’re quite ready for that – waving farewell to your familiar school this year, plus the mix of nerves and excitement about the new school, you’ve had a lot of sympathy with Peter Pan recently and his desire not to grow up.

But while he might have wished for eternal childhood, time in the real world ticks ever on (even if we’d both like to slow it down sometimes) – although as I look back at the past 12 months, for my customary birthday post, we’ve made the most of the days and weeks.

Re-reading last year’s birthday post, I’d already noticed flashes of the teen I thought you might become – those are definitely getting more and more frequent!

At times, you’re still very much a child – having planned a short visit to the new Gruffalo Clubhouse in Blackpool to review it, we spent far longer than planned as you embraced the chance to play.

At other points, I feel I’m fast forwarding to your 15th birthday. In some ways, that’s fantastic – you’re developing your own interests more and more, which are influencing our travels and days out (and more fun for me than soft play!)

A visit to the Hallyu exhibition at the V&A to feed your growing obsession with K Pop, a trip to Kensington Palace together for the mix of celebrity and fashion at the Crown to Couture exhibition, plus a donut tour of London and bubblewraps in Chinatown.

After your Year 6 production of Alice in Wonderland, we’ve also got an escape room themed around Lewis Carroll’s classic novel lined up, as we head off for a mini city break in Oxford in autumn too. After a busy year preparing for 11+ entrance exams for secondary school and SATs, I can’t help wonder if your path might one day lead here?

Given your impressive results, I’m certain you can achieve anything you want to. I’m so, so proud of you.

There are definite moments of teen attitude too, and firmer opinions on what you’d like to do while we travel (thankfully you’re not yet bored by everything I suggest though)

For now I can – usually! – drag you away from any screens to explore with me, even if you insisted on some time chilling out while we were in Split at Easter, rather than packing every moment full. Even if I flatly refused to let you watch Game of Thrones, no matter how often you asked while we were there…

This year has seen one of the most memorable trips we’ve ever done together too – and that’s up against some stiff competition. Back in 2020, I’d been looking at arranging a safari in Africa, before the pandemic scuppered all our plans.

When the opportunity came up again last year, the biggest struggle was not telling you immediately. Your face when you opened the mini suitcase and scratchcard I’d bought and revealed we were off to Kenya was a picture.

Of course, that was only the start: seeing Africa’s incredible animals in the wild in the Masai Mara’s Naboisho Conservancy was unforgettable, your impatience at hanging around waiting for a leopard vanishing when he finally appeared to climb back up the tree to devour his kill.

Your slight nervousness about whether the lions often ate visitors turning to delight as we watched lion cubs playing like overgrown kittens.

And your realisation that while hippos look cute, if dozens of them lurk together in a small stretch of river with relatively low water, they don’t smell anywhere near as cute! Just a few highlights to take away.

Despite a busy year with your increasingly full diary, we’ve had escapes closer to home as well – glamping in Kent, where your excitement at the hot tub was matched by your excitement of having a USB plug by your double bed on its high raised platform.

There was a boat trip to Brownsea island to try to find red squirrels – without success, but I did get to fulfil the promise I’d made to you before Covid, when our planned day out on a previous trip to Dorset had been rained off.

We did find llamas in Surrey at The Merry Harriers in Hambledon, heading out on a walk in the Surrey Hills with our new furry friend Mungo, who instantly won us all over.

You fell in love with Venice almost as quickly as with Mungo, hopping on the vaporetti to get around, snapping dozens of your own photos of Burano, hunting for lions and settling down to make your own carnival mask at our Venetian Mask Workshop – all those hours of drawing and colouring coming into their own.

We retraced our pre-pandemic steps to Bruges and Ghent, where copious waffles and hot chocolate helped to take the edge off the freezing temperatures of our midwinter escape.

And added another Greek island to our list too, spending two weeks exploring Crete – seeing the home of the minotaur at Knossos fed your love of Greek myths, you endured the mountain roads with me to find a pink sand beach and braved the terrapins to swim in Lake Kournas.

Although the less said about the colony of ants which had made its home in the kitchen of our second villa, the better…

Hopefully our next island, Rhodes, will include fewer insects! Somewhere I last visited when I was about your age, it’s funny that looking back at myself then, I seem so young, while you suddenly seem so grown up.

Although with more strikes on the horizon, thousands of cancelled flights and who knows what other travel disruption ahead, getting away is still not smooth sailing. Let’s hope that by next year I can stop writing that sentence!

I’m determined to enjoy this summer together though, that no man’s land between primary and secondary school. I wonder if things will change as much as I think over the next 12 months, when I come to read this post back in a year?

For now, we also have the sunshine of the Algarve and some days out in London to enjoy as well. I know that, right now, you’re not sure you want to grow up too fast.

My lovely girl, that’s absolutely fine with me.

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Main image courtesy of Depositphotos, all others copyright MummyTravels

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