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Posts Tagged ‘Family holidays’
Picture-mapping the British summer
July 22nd, 2009 |
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Picture-mapping the British summer
July 21st, 2009 |
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A school holiday survival guide
July 21st, 2009 |
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The school holidays have started. That’s a lot of free time ahead. So how can you stave off the inevitable rows and moaning? After years of getting it wrong, Tim Dowling can now offer an expert survival guide
The summer holidays are a difficult time for parents. Keeping children amused for six weeks or more, both at home and away, can be difficult to organise, exhausting and expensive. But it doesn’t have to be that way . . . Actually, it probably does have to be that way, but as a parent there are always corners to be cut, liberties to be taken and small duplicities to employ. Here are my top 10 rules for a slightly less disastrous summer, based on more than a decade’s experience of getting it wrong.
1 Encourage boredom
We all want our children to become re-acquainted with simple pleasures, or to develop a curiosity about the natural world, but this is never going to happen if you keep trying to distract them with engaging and exciting trips. Let them spend the first week of the holidays at home staring at their shoes. Offer only dispiriting chores as an alternative. Eventually, their boredom will drive them to invent games of their own, which in turn will lead to enhanced creativity, increased self-confidence and, in most cases, severe water damage. A small price to pay for not having to take them to Legoland.
2 Stop all pocket money until September
For most of the year children’s spending habits are curtailed by other commitments – school, homework, after-school clubs, games and lessons. They simply don’t have the time to get down to the shops. In summer, however, pocket money becomes dangerously empowering. Children suddenly have all day to browse sweets, toy weapons, unsuitable DVDs and unwanted pets. “It’s my money, so I can buy what I want with it,” they say, as if they’re quoting from the Human Rights Act. I have never been able to counter this argument effectively, and find it much easier to choke off the flow of cash at its source, ie me.
What rationale you provide for stopping their pocket money is up to you. You could argue that students, like teachers, don’t work during the summer and therefore don’t get paid. Of course, teachers do get paid in the summer, but your kids probably don’t know that. Sometimes it’s simpler to withhold the money on a week-to-week basis as a punishment for some fresh infraction or other. There’s always something.
3 Never tell your children where you are going until they are in the car
In my experience, a successful summer outing requires the coyest possible precis of your itinerary. Do not say: “We’re going to spend two hours in a boring gallery, followed by lunch at a restaurant you won’t like, followed by a long walk through the park in a steady drizzle, followed by – if you behave yourself, and I’m betting you won’t – an ice-cream.” Just say: “We’re going for an ice-cream. Put your seatbelt on.” Once the car is moving, you can fill them in on the details.
4 Eliminate one child from the equation
If you have two or more children, you will know that for all practical purposes you have got one too many. When confined together for any period of time, either in a tent, or a holiday  cottage, or in the back of a hired vehicle, siblings will fight over almost anything. Swapping one of your children for someone else’s kid for the day (or the week, or the summer) will ensure a calmer social dynamic. If your friends don’t have children of similar ages to yours, you need new friends.
5 If you go on holiday with friends who also have children . . .
. . . bear in mind that in the event of any altercation between their child and your child, you must always insist that your child was entirely at fault. To do otherwise will mark you out as overprotective and deluded. If their kid tries to drown your kid in the pool, you should say: “Well, I’m sure he was asking for it.” Don’t worry about looking callous; it’s just the form, and should be reciprocated. It is also considered unseemly to discipline another person’s child in public. Better to corner the youngster later and issue a calm, expletive-laden threat.
6 Remember: hungry children are biddable children
Yes, they may be grumpy and short-tempered, but they are also weak and open to suggestion. If you’re trying to coax your kids along a cliff walk, or into a medieval church, or from one airport terminal to another, do not, under any circumstances, feed them first. Sustenance of any kind tends to make them high-spirited, rebellious and unmanageable. By all means keep them hydrated, but save feeding for those times when it’s safe for all hell to break loose.
7 Always underpack
I speak not as someone who is ruthless when it comes to editing one’s luggage, but as someone who routinely packs a spare tent just because it’s possible to cram it into the car, and always ends up sorry for it. Never in the troubled history of my own family summer holidays has one of my children come up to me and said, “You know what? I really wish we’d brought my other jumper.” Forget everything you think you need: your child will not practice the violin in France, you are not going to read five books in 10 days ,and there is almost no vacation destination on earth where they don’t sell cheap footballs. Having small children is no excuse: travelling with a bottle steriliser is like taking your rice cooker on holiday.
8 Beware of hidden costs
Certain supposedly budget-friendly summer pastimes can turn out to be surprisingly expensive. A visit to a pick-your-own farm may sound like a cheap day out, but in my experience it is perfectly possible for three small children to pick £70 worth of raspberries in under an hour, and you can’t put them back on the plant. A car boot sale, on the other hand, will keep them busy for just as long for as little as £3 apiece. Make sure you tell them it isn’t pocket money, but an advance on future earnings.
9 Ignore all child-unfriendly proscriptions
If you are planning on remaining in the British Isles this summer, chances are you will at some point find yourself in an establishment where your children are either implicitly or expressly unwelcome, be it a pub, a restaurant or your place of work. This is not a time to be abashed or embarrassed about having kids; it’s a time to be passive-aggressive. When faced with a choice between a pub that welcomes children with open arms and one that seeks to make you feel awkward and uncomfortable, always opt for the latter: the food will be better. Then sit down and pretend that you don’t understand the nature of anyone’s objections. Pretend you’re German if you have to. If confronted by other patrons, try to express yourself in language that suggests that, while you understand why some people might not wish to share the company of several noisy and badly behaved children, at this precise moment in time you don’t care: “Yes, I’m sure they are spoiling your quiet drink, madam – they’re also spoiling my quiet drink, and I have to take them home with me when I’m finished.”
10 Take your own nit comb
If you’re travelling to the continent, be prepared. Do you know how to say “nit comb” in Spanish? Me neither.
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High on the hog in the Languedoc
July 6th, 2009 |
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It’s a new holiday village but the architecture is traditional, as are the activities. Ian Belcher tries winemaking, trout tickling – and a spot of boar hunting
Club Med, eat your heart out. Mark Warner, look away now. I’ve seen the future of holiday villages and it involves taking pot shots at wild boar, treading Corbières grapes, and – if you’re feeling reckless – tickling speckled trout. Wind surfing and sailing lessons? They’re just so last season, chéri.
Les Jardins de Saint Benoît, tucked into the widescreen panoramic drama of the French Languedoc, is aiming to rewrite the holiday village rulebook. Harnessing the passion, traditions and skill of local Occitane winegrowers and artisans, it offers a practical, herb-infused taste of Mediterranean rural life – a natural high-de-hi.
But the opening revelation comes well before you snaffle a first truffle: Les Jardins has interpreted “village” quite literally – it bulges out from the (real) medieval Saint-Laurent de la Cabrerisse like an ochre hernia. It opened last month, several centuries after its host, but old and new blur into a seamless splatter of terracotta tiles and limestone walls.
It’s a deliberate deception. Three years’ construction, £55m and 15 rewrites of the heritage master plan have captured the details and textures of original village buildings, albeit with modern tweaks such as pergola-shaded gardens. With its grid of stone-paved, car-free streets lined with Victorian copper lamps, it would bring a rosy flush to the Prince of Wales’s cheek. The Gallic Poundbury’s 171 self-catering houses, kissing a stonking restaurant, spa and swimming pool, have state-of-the-art kitchens and bathrooms but display a style dubbed chic rustique: all earth tones, artfully distressed southern French furniture and pastel shutters.
Occupying the site of a ruined 12th-century abbey, Les Jardins is laced with freshly planted olive trees, lavender bushes and roses. If, understandably, it feels rather new, there’s also an original maze of medieval walled gardens, shared with the villagers. These drip with fruit, vegetables and herbs, bordered by well-established organic vineyards, which lead down to the Nielle river.
But the unique heritage architecture is just a soupçon of its integration with Languedoc life. There’s also employment – nearly all the staff live nearby – and a groundbreaking array of guest activities that involve the area’s farmers, chefs and artisans, from cheese makers to beekeepers. “We’re building a bridge between locals and tourists,” says Miguel Espada, president of Garrigae, the resort operator behind Les Jardins. “At Club Med or Mark Warner everyone stays within the complex, but we’re completely open to the community. We want guests to get back to nature, to sample the Mediterranean joie de vivre, to experience totally new things.”
You can say that again, Miguel: it’s the first time sanglier (wild boar) hunting has appeared on my holiday itinerary. But just hours after arriving, I’m crossing Garrigae’s metaphorical bridge with two locals: Daniel Esparza, Saint-Laurent’s former mayor, and his beefy son, Ludo, who are planning to bag a sanglier they spotted scoffing their grapes.
We climb through pine forests, passing an outcrop where witches once danced on the summer solstice, and the promised joie de vivre arrives in the shape of food. Astounding food. Food eaten alfresco yards from the hilltop garden where it was grown: mushrooms with wine and rosemary, lamb shank with creamy aubergine, and cheek-tingling lemon pie. Under dappled sunlight, we wash the meal down with marquisette – white wine with lemon – and bottles of rosé “from those vines over there”. It’s like a Magners commercial only with better booze.
As I gorge, my hosts talk about the dangerous, sly wild boar. Languedoc’s boar population has exploded as new highways have blocked their old foraging routes. The critters have stayed put, gorging on farmers’ crops and producing super-sized litters. “They eat everything,” exclaims Esparza. “Grapes, potatoes, small rabbits. They are pigs.” Which is accurate, if a little harsh.
“It’s not about killing,” he stresses. “It’s about eating. We’re respecting the natural balance of nature. We don’t give boys PlayStations here; we give them guns. I’ve passed on my knowledge of nature to Ludo since he was young.”
Ludo – who says he sometimes smears himself with boar shit to creep close to his prey – seems a good man to hide behind. At midnight, after a final “savage cherry” liqueur that renders accurate shooting impossible, I climb into his battered van. Ludo makes a strangling noise, hinting at the animal’s fate, asks if I’m “ready for adventure”, and then, bar the odd grunt, doesn’t speak for two hours. I’m boar hunting with Obelix.
The former mayor is in another car, leaning out the window. His loaded shotgun rests on the wing mirror – something Boris Johnson hasn’t tried in Chiswick. Yet. We rip across country, up and down rutted tracks, occasionally zipping past village cafés where regulars sit outside sipping late-night digestifs. Grass and vines tower above the van. Every so often Ludo screeches to a stop, listens intently for evidence of wild boar mainlining grapes, grunts, and accelerates. We perform a high-speed swerve to chase a rabbit. If we hit something, death will be sudden and brutal – and the boar may be a little sore as well.
Yesterday Daniel spotted 23 sangliers, but tonight they have stage fright. Or a crystal ball. After two hours we’re still boar-less. It’s an intoxicating rush, but I have rising indigestion and falling bloodlust. We are packed off home, awaiting a dawn call should they spot one.
Late next morning I’m staring straight into the eyes of a dead sanglier. His whiskers drip pathos, his tusks retribution. Don’t fret. No wildlife was harmed in the making of this article. He was shot years ago by vigneron Jean-Pierre Mazard, and his stuffed head now decorates an atmospheric beamed room at Jean-Pierre’s winery, alongside a stuffed owl and some sepia photographs.
I am here to blend Chateau Belcher 2009. Forget straightforward wine-tasting; this is an advanced vino-experience. “It’s a science,” says Jean-Pierre, “a complex art.”
Oenotourism will be central to Les Jardins. Swaddled by the legendary Corbières wine region, the resort aims to immerse guests in its production. You can even lease a strip of vines and, helped by local farmers, make multiple visits to tend and harvest your grapes, before bottling a bespoke mini vintage.
Most of the activities are highly seasonal – November means picking and pressing olives; January is for hunting truffles – but I’m here in a quiet spell. So Jean-Pierre and wine technician Matthieu Dubernet show me how to mix my own rocket fuel from three classic Languedoc grapes harvested last year: Syrah, Grenache and Carignan. Individually, they’re unbalanced mono-wines, but together they make sweet music.
We start by sampling an acclaimed blend: Jean-Pierre’s 2004 Cuvée Annie, with its scent of cherries, olives and menthol. It’s done in a friendly, unintimidating atmosphere. You don’t have to be an expert, just find a blend you like.
We move on to the mono wines. Carignan is a bit “animaux” and Grenache is “sweeter, bigger, smoother”. But I can’t make a single intelligent observation on Syrah. “Turkish delight?” I hazard. Jean-Pierre, the 12th generation of Mazard winemakers, diplomatically raises the tone, explaining that Syrah is complex, with hints of garrigues, thyme, rosemary and blackcurrant.
Just like Turkish delight. Thank you.
Things then turn scientific, with glass measuring jars and a calculator. It’s seriously absorbing. Minor blend changes carry major clout. Cuvée Annie is 65% Syrah and 35% Carignan and Grenache. But reduce the Syrah, up the Grenache and it becomes “fruity, easy-drinking”.
It’s like playing with a gourmet chemistry kit. We reintroduce a little Syrah, apparently making it more “terroir”, but my first solo tweak turns this to “absolute pants” – my verdict, not Jean-Pierre’s – with astringent tannins. After two more changes, I’ve created Chateau Belcher: 15% Carignan, 30% Grenache, 55% Syrah. It’s declared “very drinkable” but, frankly, it’s basic polyester compared with the velvety Serres-Mazard 2004 I depart with.
Along with other activities – Les Jardins plans to start a weekly market – winemaking is part of Garrigae’s drive to champion local produce. “We want to be a locomotive for the region,” says Espada. “Local producers are passionate, but they know virtually nothing about marketing.”
This is personal. The charismatic Espada, who made his fortune through an internet start-up, is committed to promoting his home region. “I grew up 15km from here and feel a real social responsibility,” he says. “If this wasn’t good, my family would kill me.”
Kids’ activities reflect his Languedoc childhood, whether it’s pottering on the resort farm or harvesting wild figs to make jam. I sample an option you won’t find in Balham: trout tickling. It sounds like an MP’s expenses claim, and is suitably slimy. First we feel under a flat rock in the Nielle, where fish doze in the shallows. Then we sedate them by caressing their bellies, before attempting a lightning grab.
It’s glorious Enid Blyton-esque fun, but it would be a shame to leave surrounding Languedoc unexplored. I drive through a vast landscape marked by vineyards, hamlets and vertiginous switchback roads en route to the giddyingly high Cathar stronghold of Quéribus – a perfect goal for cycling masochists.
Back at Les Jardins I’m paralysed by heat and the range of activities. Perhaps I need a grapeseed oil and herb massage among the vines? Or maybe something more mainstream, like tennis? I’m contemplating whether I’m too old for the kids’ club – Circus Training with Denis la Rue followed by Smell Lotto sounds sensational – when I meet Mark and Jenny from north Lincolnshire. They stumbled across Les Jardins on the web, caught a Ryanair flight to Carcassonne, and appear happily bemused. “I never thought I’d be grouting a mosaic on my holidays,” says Jenny. “It’s quirky, but also very upmarket. ‘Holiday Village’ doesn’t do it justice – it’s far more stylish shabby-chic than most coastal resorts.”
Strangely, I also have no experience of holiday mosaic grouting. It’s tempting, but I plump for something perhaps equally bizarre: goat herding. I’m visiting Guillaume Portal, a laconic, roll-up smoking producer of award-winning cheeses. But you, or more likely your children, can help lead the goats out from the steep pastures for milking – the fuel for Guillaume’s fabulous fromage.
It’s a schizophrenic world. One minute I’m in the goat shed, with more flies than the Aussie outback, the next I’m wearing a plastic coat and shoe covers, standing in a startlingly hygienic production plant, learning about intestinal enzymes. It is, however, safe to say few people return from holiday knowing how to stimulate a mushroom crust on a three-kilogramme goat’s cheese.
Later I’m using the stuff to make Languedoc tapas. Dany from Saint-Laurent demonstrates, while her winemaker son provides translation, tasty vino and a heartfelt testimony to Les Jardins. “It has the spirit of our village,” Arnaud says. “It’s good for my generation’s future.”
That will be music to Espada’s ears. Les Jardins, Garrigae’s third opening, has attracted large regional government subsidies, and massive interest from the French press. “We really believe we’re pioneering a unique model of sustainable tourism,” he says. “This will become the norm in a few years. Who knows, maybe one day we’ll end up buying all those traditional holiday villages.”
Essentials
A one-bedroom house (sleeping two) at Les Jardins de Saint Benoît (0871 2187066; garrigaeresorts.com) costs from £145 a night (seven-night stays from £716). Larger houses available. Activities cost extra: cheesemaking and goatherding €26, trout tickling €43, wine blending €34, and a full-scale boar hunt €128. Rail Europe (0844 8484070; raileurope.co.uk) has returns to Narbonne from £105. Avis (08445 818181; avis.co.uk) offers seven days’ car hire from £242.
More ways to enjoy the best of rural France
Walking in Corcsica
There’s no better way to experience Corsica than on foot. Headwater (01606 720199; headwater.com) offers an eight-day “Contrasts of Corsica” independent walking holiday, which starts in Piana and takes in stunning coastal paths, lemon groves, pine-clad forests and mountain streams. Two nights are spent in Corte, the historic old capital in the mountainous heart of the island, famous for its spectacular citadel, which is perched precariously on a large craggy outcrop.
• From £869 in August, including five hotels, most meals, route notes and luggage transfers. Fly from Gatwick to Ajaccio in Corsica with Easyjet (easyjet.com).
Lavender Festival in Montelimar
From next Saturday, the town of Montélimar in the Rhône-Alpes region is holding its annual two-day lavender festival (montelimar-tourisme.com). There’ll be flower arranging, traditional lavender distilling, flower-decorated horse-drawn carriages and the chance to stock up on lavender byproducts, such as honey and candles.
• Fly Gatwick-Marseille with Easyjet (easyjet.com) and hire a car through Auto Europe (auto-europe.co.uk) for the 170km drive to Montélimar. For places to stay visit montelimar-tourisme.com.
A chalet in the Alps
Summer is a great time to visit an Alpine ski resort: the crowds have gone and the pistes are transformed into glorious green hills. Just France (020 8780 4463; justfrance.co.uk) offers chalet holidays throughout the French Alps. The Chalet Chavannes, just above the resort of Les Gets, sleeps six and has an open garden with a stream running through it and a large balcony with a sauna and relaxation area. Visit the adventure park and lake just 15 minutes’ walk away, and Lake Geneva and the spa towns of Evian and Thonon-les-Bains are a short drive away.
• From £784 for a seven-night stay for six people in July/August, including return ferry crossing from Dover to Calais.
Wine & canal cruise in the Loire Valley
Sample your way through the Loire Valley on Le Boat’s Wine Lovers’ Cruise (0844 463 3577; leboat.co.uk). The round-trip cruise departs from Chatillon-sur-Loire and takes in Nevers and Sancerre, where you can learn all about the region’s vineyards at the Maison des Sancerre, a 15th-century house dedicated to the art of wine-making.
• A seven-night tour for up to eight people in August costs from £2,255. Fuel costs extra. Fly to Paris with Easyjet (as before), then take the train (one-and-a-half hours) to Chatillon-sur-Loire.
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Just how did caravanning get cool?
June 28th, 2009 |
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Airstream, the iconic US caravan-maker, has launched its first range designed for Europe. But would the sleek curves and power-assisted gadgets be enough to help Tim Moore convince his family that caravanning really could be fun?
Middle age isn’t all bad. Here is just one of the unsung bonuses: if you passed your driving test before 1997, you’re already qualified to raise merry hell on public roads at the wheel of a car-plus-caravan “outfit” of up to 8.25 tonnes in weight. So when you see someone under 30 towing a caravan, be content that at least they know what they’re doing, having proven so in a stringent supplementary test. Except you won’t, because unless they’re stealing it or are en route to some Top Gear-sponsored demolition derby, no one under 30 tows a caravan.
Two things threaten that demographic. First, recession: a domestic caravan holiday is cheap, which explains why bookings at Caravan Club sites are up by 40 per cent this year. Second, Airstream – the only caravan it’s OK to want, or indeed ever to refer to by name – has just released a modish European range. These factors are fated never to work in tandem, however, because Airstreams are tremendously expensive.
In the deeply conservative world of caravan design, standing out from the crowd is a simple matter of not looking like a big margarine tub. With their curvaceous silver flanks and their smoked glass, the new Airstreams manage this with some ease. The European range pays strident homage to the US firm’s iconic 1936 launch model, a gleaming, bullet-nosed embodiment of that era’s obsession with aerodynamics and shiny metal, fittingly crafted by the designer responsible for Charles Lindbergh’s Spirit of St Louis monoplane. It’s a testament to their timeless appeal, and aluminium’s rust-resistant durability, that an astonishing 70 per cent of all Airstreams ever made are still on the road.
Mindful that I live in a road of modest breadth and challenging geometry, I elected to pick up my Airstream International 684 – and the mighty Land Rover thoughtfully provided by the firm to save my turn-of-the-century Mondeo estate any embarrassment – from the car park of our local B&Q. The prudence of this arrangement asserted itself at once. The principal distinction of Airstream’s European models, I’d been told, was that they’d been condensed in sympathy with our cramped and twisty-turny continent. Compact was not a word that sprang to mind as I surveyed my family’s home and haulier for the weekend ahead: a shining, eight-wheeled convoy that filled the tarmac chasm between garden deliveries and the trolley rack. It would have looked more at home trundling across Red Square on May Day.
Two shimmering tonnes and 50 grand’s worth of hand-riveted aluminium and high-end consumer electronics: on the caravan spectrum, this was well away from Father Ted’s holiday home, and closer to the sort of thing that Russell Crowe might be found losing his temper inside. If Jeremy Clarkson’s tireless caravan-baiting suggests a man protesting too much, his guilty secret would be an Airstream at the back of the quadruple garage.
My daughters were won over before they even got in, by the step that electrically projected itself to welcome them up to the door. My son was never going to be a tough nut to crack, institutionalised as he is to bijou living after 15 years in a box room, sleeping on a stilted bed with his nose a foot from the ceiling. The permanent queen-sized mattress installed at the Airstream’s very distant back seemed to placate my wife who, like me but with greater foreboding, had expected to assemble something from many lengths of sofa cushion.
For me, one glance around the interior – flat-screen telly, downlighters, climate control – emphasised how wonderfully little this weekend would share with my solitary relevant experience, a family tour of North Wales during an earlier recession-related caravanning boom in the mid-70s. That caravan, borrowed from my grandfather, was built from hardboard and Formica, and offered only two berths. So it was that every night my older siblings and I huddled together at the mildewed flaps of an earwig-colonised army-surplus tent pitched alongside, watching my parents knock back the Mateus Rosé. Justice was served when our chemical toilet overturned during an ascent of Britain’s second-steepest road, shedding its grim load across their sleeping quarters.
The last time I looked, which in fairness wasn’t recently, caravans were still exclusively furnished in horrible brown gingham and made out of old kitchen units. The Airstream really is not. Pimped up beyond all recognition, it hardly deserves to be called a caravan. Bold colours and elliptical storage holes impart the retro-futuristic vibe of a space-station shuttle in 2001. The bathroom sink is one of those swanky counter-top porcelain troughs, and the white-piped leather and louche cushions give the U-shaped seating zone the look of a holding area for high-class groupies. If you’re not a glutton for attention, look elsewhere for your mobile accommodation. We weren’t so much going on holiday as going on tour.
The 684 is Airstream’s hugest model, something I came to appreciate as the cheery man who’d delivered it walked me around the preposterous perimeter. Street-legal I might have been, but it wasn’t hard to understand why Airstream had politely insisted on bolstering age with a little experience. The week before, at their behest, I had travelled to the Caravan Club’s training centre in Sussex for a half-day caravan-manipulating masterclass. Under the calm eye of instructor Bernie Jones, I very nearly succeeded in backing a much smaller and less valuable caravan through a precise 90-degree turn, the standard campsite-parking procedure.
“It’s all about confidence,” Bernie said after one of my more complete failures, but it was actually about defying every tenet of spatial logic. A mastery of parallel parking isn’t going to help: you’re better off calling on an aptitude for cutting your own hair. With a left-handed scythe, in the dark. You turn the wheel very slightly one way, and the caravan goes drastically the other; a tiny corrective adjustment and your outfit is swiftly jack-knifed at five-to-one. Then Bernie tells you to do it again using only your big sticky-out mirrors, and this time everything goes wrong in reverse. It’s like the Highway Code redrafted by Escher.
The stand-out message of that day: when it comes to opportunities for cartoon misadventure, the caravanner is spoilt for choice. He can forget to crank down the prop stands in each corner, and have the caravan and its contents seesaw destructively to earth when his family climbs in. He can forget to crank them back up before he leaves, doing terrible things to the caravan chassis and anything in its path. He can drive away with the electric cable or the waste-water container still plugged in, or the little front jockey wheel still lowered. He can leave a window ever so slightly open, and arrive at his destination to find the caravan internally slathered with road filth, or omit to attach the “breakaway cable”, and arrive to find it gone.
Bernie had already given me a 16-point pre-departure checklist, and attempting to acquire familiarity with the Airstream man’s supplementary 12-pointer (“10: prime toilet”) meant we lurched out into Chiswick roundabout at the height of Friday’s early evening rush hour. The Land Rover acknowledged its monstrous burden with only the slightest hint of inertia; I did my white-faced expressionless best to ignore whatever might be going on at the Airstream’s unseen rear, a couple of postcodes behind.
The motorway was better, despite the jolt of panic that accompanied every reflex glance in the rear-view mirror, and the accompanying revelation that we were being aggressively tailgated by a New York subway carriage. Every time we approached a service station a growing number of family members pleaded for refreshment and, later, bladder relief, but they pleaded in vain. A close-quarter manoeuvre before a baying crowd of Happy Eaters just wasn’t going to happen.
Other motorists seemed torn between covetous rubber-necking and exhibiting their Clarkson tendency.
Glamorous, huge and shiny it might be, but it was still a caravan. Kids in passing cars would beam and wave, then their dads would cut me up. Only lorry drivers gave their unreserved headlight-flashing approval, and even they dropped back in embarrassment once we left the M40 and its forgiving expanses of carriageway and began waywardly punishing kerbs and mini roundabouts.
To those with partners less fixated on Tudor pageantry, the West Midlands may not seem an obvious choice for a weekend break. Yet something had lured dozens of large white boxes to the Caravan Club’s immaculate Chapel Lane site, south of Birmingham, and it can’t just have been the newly restored Elizabeth Garden at Kenilworth Castle. The rain that now fell steadily had long been predicted, as had the unseasonal chill in the air. Most caravan owners are campers made good: perhaps part of the fun of caravanning is doing it in weather that makes you really glad you’re not in a tent.
The sight of our Zeppelin nosing up to the gates brought faces to many plastic windows. “Caravan parking is a voyeuristic sport,” Bernie had warned me, “especially when someone turns up towing a massive silver cigar.” My navigational probings proved so instantly and shriekingly inept that within moments the site warden had trotted up and was talking me in – left hand down, full lock, to me, to you. Every order was the precise opposite of my expectation, but in a minute we were geometrically aligned in position A.
Almost at once the first of many curious neighbours squelched over. “I said to the wife, ‘Stick your wellies on, love – we’ve got to have a look at that’.” He probably meant the Airstream, rather than the spectacle of a wet family losing a fight with a stubborn jockey wheel. It was 40 minutes before everything was unhitched, cranked down, clipped on and plugged in to my semi-satisfaction, yet despite that and the weather, anticipation was somehow sustained. The electric step hummed out and we piled aboard. A night in a caravan: an experience that life had thus far denied each of us, to the regret of very nearly all.
Fiddling with switches and finding the corkscrew occupied a happy half hour. Then we microwaved ready meals, and ate them perched on those groovy leather banquettes, watching Casualty. Washing up five plates and priming the odd toilet somehow accounted for all our 40 litres of water: over the weekend we had to refill the drum five times. Caravanning is certainly an effective way to confront the reality of human wastefulness, and indeed human waste. But parenting is so much easier when you’ve got emptying the toilet cassette in your armoury of punishments.
Huw Edwards said goodnight, and in the absence of Freeview and board games the entertainment options instantly withered. This could have proved an awkward juncture in the holiday schedule: a couple of hours of parental us-time ahead, with the only place to enjoy it now waiting to be turned into our children’s bed. But the journey had left me spent, and you can’t make teenagers go to sleep at 10.30pm on a Friday. My wife and I and our 10-year-old stumbled off to the big bed at the back, and left the other two to enjoy some them-time. It should have been an incendiary situation: a small space and two physically determined young people deep into a phase of mutual hatred. It is a tribute to the convivial mood engendered by Airstream life that we were woken by birdsong not bloodshed.
An unedifying fry-up fuelled us for Kenilworth, and after a complementary side-trip to Warwick Castle we got back to Chapel Lane in time for the Eurovision Song Contest. Despite the mood lighting and surround sound, I was by now detecting the odd echo of my childhood caravanning experience: the mysterious underfloor gurgles, the ropey TV reception, the banged elbows, the cupboard doors dashed into faces. Spill a pint of milk at home and it’s a pain. In a caravan it’s an apocalypse.
Crammed round the table, we all got alarmingly into Eurovision. With one loud voice we cheered and chortled and roared ugly partisan abuse. The enhanced camaraderie was almost unavoidable: stick a family in a caravan and you bring it together in the most literal sense. Already I could feel the first twinges of regret that in the morning we’d be stepping down that electric step for the last time. But this was tempered with the surging, untrammelled glee that having done so, we would – by very gracious arrangement with the Airstream man – be driving back down the M40 gloriously unencumbered.
Essentials
Airstream (015396 24141; airstreameurope.co.uk) offers European-spec models from £29,950 for the Bambi to £49,715 for the 684 model. Land Yacht Holidays (airstream4rent.co.uk) rents Airstream 684s, like the one Tim used, from £599 for a three-night weekend, £999 for a week. The company delivers it to the site of your choice. Airstream Rentals (0845 070 5990; airstream-rentals.co.uk) offers a luxury service aimed at events – the Gallagher brothers currently have one each on tour – from £1,000 a day. For details of Caravan Club sites see caravanclub.co.uk or call 01342 326 944.
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