Why I’m putting my family through the horrors of a road trip

Frances Whiting spent many childhood holidays stuck in the back of a car on a roadtrip. It’s a family tradition she’s determined to hand down to her kids.

Who doesn’t love a road trip?

We are going on a road trip. Not a terribly long one, just long enough for some sort of family warfare to break out in the back seat.

This is inevitable when you place four people at differing hormonal stages of life together in an enclosed space.

We’ll have a menopausal woman, a man going through some sort of midlife crisis which largely involves wearing a lot of 80s rock T-shirts, a teenager and tweenager, so it’s going to be a lot of fun.

Now, part of the reason we are doing this is because our oldest son is about to start university, and I suspect won’t be too keen on going on holidays with us for too much longer, and also because we’ve never done a family road trip together before.

Road trip excitement.

I, however, spent my childhood holidays gasping for air in the back seat of the family car, squished between my siblings who said things like, “Mum, Frances is BREATHING on me again”.

And as I said to my husband, “Look, if we had to spend our family holidays locked in a car playing I Spy, the most boring game ever invented, for hours on end, then so should our kids, dammit.”

Luckily, this childhood training means I am well equipped to handle any family road trip, and have prepared this handy guide, with the correct procedures and answers to all questions.

“Are we there yet?” No, we are not there yet, as you well know. You know this because we are still on our street.

“Can I go to the toilet?” No you may not. You should have gone earlier when I told you to, before we left the house. You’ll just have to hang on. What do you mean you can’t? Well, you’ll just have to. Oh, all right, we’ll just pull over and you’ll have to duck behind a bush somewhere. No, I will not come with you. Oh, all right, I will. Honestly.

Ready to go.

“I’m hungry, what’s to eat?” What’s to eat is the lunch I made you earlier. I told you to eat before we went. I made those lovely ham and cheese sandwiches which none of you touched. None of you. (Look out window wistfully).

“I’m bored.” Bored? Bored? How could you possibly be bored with all these telegraph poles to count? I know, how about a family game of I Spy? Come on, it’ll be fun. I’ll go first. I spy with my little eye something beginning with T? Anybody? Anybody want to have a guess? Oh come on, people, it’s tree! Tree! How could you not get Tree?

“I can’t eat, I feel sick.” Well, if you’re too sick now to eat those sandwiches I made you, you’ll be too sick to eat the ice cream when we stop at the service station later, won’t you?

“Can I stay in the car?” What, and miss out on the medieval wheel-making museum? Are you joking? You know I’ve read up on this town, and apparently this is also where the hat pin was invented … I might buy a few while I’m here, actually, for Christmas presents.

Right, that should about cover it, although I suspect that my family road trip will be nothing like my childhood ones, and instead will be spent trying to get my children off their phones, but there you go.

Or rather, there we go, and the truth is I can’t wait to go on one of our last adventures together, with my family as close by as I can get them.

Originally published as Why I’m putting my family through the horrors of a road trip