Nine years of travel with a child

As my gorgeous girl turns nine, the sun is shining outside. Except as I write my annual look-back on my ninth year of travel with a child, we’re ‘celebrating’ your latest birthday from self-isolation – party postponed, birthday plans rescheduled.

Re-reading last year’s post, only about four months into the Covid-19 pandemic, when we could at least manage a family visit to London Zoo on your birthday, I hardly guessed what the next 12 months would bring.

Because one of the saddest parts of this latest stretch confined to home is how resigned you are to the fact that plans simply can’t be counted on, that anything might have to be cancelled at the last minute – the story of our past year, I suppose. Don’t worry, this post does get a bit brighter!

For us, as for most people, our past year has been a series of ups and downs. On the upside, finally getting to see family again, even if it often involved sitting outside under blankets or waiting months between meetings.

Getting to travel together once more, after months at home or venturing no further than a short drive away – even if we haven’t gone far.

Our last-minute beach break in Belgium was one casualty: booked as holidays to Europe seemed to be back on the cards last summer, carefully sticking with a Eurotunnel crossing in the car to avoid planes, trains or ferries, the rules changed with unexpected swiftness so it was then cancelled before I’d even considered the packing.

With a year to use my Eurotunnel ticket, I didn’t foresee 12 months of optimistically changing the dates then eventually taking up their offer of being able to use the credit for another year. As I’m typing, it’s getting tougher and tougher to actually get to France, so I don’t see us using it any time soon.

But as I promised, this post isn’t all gloom and doom. Our horizons shrank but we seized the opportunities that we did have – a last-minute break to Devon to replace Belgium, staying in Exeter, getting our beach time in Exmouth as well as venturing to Dartmoor and stopping at Stonehenge along the way.

We found mammoths in Shropshire as well as in Norfolk, with some walks along the Deep History Coast, before spotting fossils in Lyme Regis on an autumn break in Dorset. Definitely a lot more fun than homeschooling in lockdown!

It felt like we’d started to hit a whole new stage together – as you get older, stronger, it’s easier to plan now you can stay up later, walk further, now you’re more and more fascinated by some of what you’re discovering and learning and equally keen to escape our own four walls.

As ever, you’re ready to tell me when you’re not enjoying something! But I see you challenging yourself more and more this year too, and meeting that challenge.

There’s no question is has been a challenging year all round, and I’ve marvelled at your maturity and resilience – at times it has been me wanting to stamp my feet like a toddler at the sheer unfairness, at what you’ve missed, at what we’ve missed together.

But also taking on those everyday challenges of growing up – getting braver at running a few risks: climbing higher during a visit to Bewilderwood, performing in front of classmates after starting to learn the guitar this year, accepting that failure has to be a price to learn new things.

I’ve seen it as you immersed yourself in the interactive experiments at Winchester Science Centre during our latest trip to Winchester, as you chose to embrace the fun rather than the grumbles, during a hilarious game of mini golf almost up to our ankles in water on a ridiculously rainy weekend in Essex.

You’ve even stayed up well past your bedtime to watch the Ceremony of the Keys at the Tower of London. Although you’re maybe not quite as grown-up as you think you are yet…

My suggestion that you sleep in the car on the way home was inevitably met with instant scorn. But we’d barely pulled out of the car park before your eyes had closed.

One thing I was glad about last year was that we had seized our opportunities when we could rather than waiting to travel, not putting trips off until you were older.

And while the world is no longer our oyster, that approach of ‘book all the things while we’re allowed’ meant we also squeezed in a few days out between lockdown two and London moving from tier two, to three, to four, to lockdown three, all with astonishing rapidity – including a visit to Kensington Palace and the Fantastic Beasts exhibition at the Natural History Museum.

Unlike every other year I can think of, I didn’t have a wishlist of countries for us to visit at the start of 2020 (unless you count ‘anywhere’).

2021 brought lockdown three, but also vaccinations and the promise of better times ahead – even if they are still not arriving as quickly as we’d like – along with more opportunities grabbed and a string of Easter days out at Hampton Court Palace, Kew Gardens and Warwick Castle, an escape to the beach in Sussex.

More recently, we’ve had a chance to indulge your love of history with the Terrible Thames cruise and your bookworm side, finally making it to the Oxford Story Museum, a trip which had been repeatedly postponed – a sign that we really are starting to do the things you missed out on in 2020?

The last year has been an ongoing reminder that there are still plenty of places to explore near home, with a long weekend in Herefordshire, a county I’ve barely visited, as well as a day out in Colchester during our half-term break back to Norfolk and Suffolk.

Although I can’t help agreeing with you when you say you’d also like a ‘proper’ holiday, much as you enjoy our staycations.

There’s no getting away from the fact that this isn’t over yet even if ‘Freedom Day’ is looming.

With an actual layer of dust on our passports last time I dug them out, I’ve booked a trip away for next month, heading to Lanzarote – it’s still anyone’s guess if we’ll actually get to go, 18 months after either of us last left England.

My clever, sweet, funny girl, I am so so proud of you, of all you’ve achieved despite everything this past year has thrown at you, at the nine-year-old you’ve become.

For now, I can’t think far enough ahead to wonder what your 10th birthday will bring, as I still finalise plans for the rest of July.

But whatever adventures are allowed, I can’t wait to keep sharing them with you.

Main image courtesy Depositphotos, all others copyright MummyTravels

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