Dreaming about holidays.

It’s sort of summer. It must be, I burnt my shoulder going to the dentist last week. That may of course have been it, but you never know.

We don’t have a summer holiday planned. We’ve got our Tudor experience coming up, and I can’t quite see past that at the moment. Once we are through it, we might grab the tent and go off to a field somewhere for a week. It’ll probably be all we can afford tbh, Tudoring isn’t actually all that cheap once you’ve outfitted six people, several of whom keep growing. But what I’d really like to do while we still have all the children at an age to travel with us, is go abroad. Not far. I’d be happy with France. Maybe take the tent, or possibly go for the luxury (?) of a mobile home, like on the Thomson Al Fresco holiday parks. I’m browsing them right now. It would be the modern equivalent of the caravan holidays I went on as a child, though those were to Wales, which kind of isn’t as exotic.

I still remember them though. Remember the year we had a french exchange student, and the look on her face when she saw the accommodation she’d been brought to. We were a large family, and caravan holidays were what we could afford – she was an only one, and was a few days late to the exchange because she’d flown back from a tour of the Greek islands.

We didn’t stay in touch after the exchange. Odd that.

Would a holiday park in France give us the experience of being in France? Or would it be homogenised and feel just like any other holiday park any other place?

I don’t know. I can’t know. And I doubt that this year will be the year I get to find out – what with the car still being in the garage. (Yes, it’s still in the garage. No, coping without it isn’t easy. Yes, I hate Mazdas, and DPFs and engine management systems.) What would it cost to go to France? There’s the passport fee for Tigerboy, the rest of us have them. Must sort that out for him actually, though it seems pointless without a holiday actually planned. Then fuel if we actually had a car – at least a couple of tanks I’m guessing. So £140 for that. And then the cheapest holidays appear to be around £220 for a mobile home with three bedrooms. Best part of £400 for a week in a caravan.

I’m not sure that really is living the dream, is it? Though it’s not the caravan I remember from my own childhood. It’s hours and hours on a sandy beach with the sea seemingly miles away. It’s penny games in the arcades – the only time we were allowed to gamble. Chips in newspaper cones (can you even get those any more?). Hearing the train go past the end of the park every hour or so, and shouting “a train, a train”. Evening entertainment – somewhere there is a picture of me with a huge grin on my face and a boa constrictor draped around my neck. Those holiday park entertainments were legendary. One year we had our portraits drawn in pencil, and they were on the wall for years and years and several houses. Katrin’s picture had to be drawn from a photograph as she was too young to sit for that length of time – I remember sitting for mine.

I wonder where they are now, those pictures. Doesn’t make much difference, I can see them if I close my eyes.

It’s the memories I want for my children, and I suppose those are priceless. But you can’t actually create them on demand anyway, so I guess this year, we’ll see what we can do without travel.

Disclosure: this post is sponsored. All opinions remain my own.