I’ve been banging on about this for a while now, but it’s still a problem. There are six of us. Our car seats 5. Holidays, particularly camping holidays, have turned into a complicated real life version of the fox and chicken puzzle, (the 12 year old can be alone for a certain length of time. The baby must always be with me. If dp is at home he prefers to have the car. And so on) and weekends away involve abandoning t’other half to his fate while I wrangle four children alone.
It’s not a lot of fun. I could go on blaming our current state of disarray on the baby having been ten days early and catching us off guard, but as he’s nearly six months old now, I think it’s time to admit I just need to pull my finger out and get on with it. It’s not as if it’s difficult – we just need a bigger car.
Of course, this does rather contradict our current drive (if you’ll pardon the pun) to downsize and live in ever more environmentally friendly ways. But modern cars are, as far as I can tell, much more efficient than older models. I caught him upstairs drooling over the new A class mercedes the other day – setting aside the fact that it doesn’t actually fit our required profile as it doesn’t fit us all in – it’s a far cry from the huge beast I was using as my company car when I worked for the Montessori school. And even that was pretty good on a long run – I got to Scotland and back on a single tank of fuel when we did our winter camp there, which was impressive for such an old car with such a big engine. Mercedes just are very well built I think, but sadly, not quite what we’re looking for.
I’d love to be able to figure out a way to make cycling our transportation mode of choice. I know it’s a great way of fitting exercise into our day to day life but I just can’t quite work out how we’d manage things like our history etc club. I know that various people do things like walking and cycling to nearby things and then using car clubs for holidays and longer trips, but I can’t quite get my head around the economics or logistics of it. Do car clubs have 7 seaters? Can you borrow them for a weekend or a week?
I even looked at hiring a campervan – our next possible Kentwell visit is at the end of September and I’m worried about overnight temperatures – but the price was exorbitant 🙁 Lack of car wouldn’t pay for many jaunts of that kind.
Oh, I dunno. I wish there was an easy answer. Maybe a magic wand I could wave to just stretch the Mazda so we could fit an extra person in. When it comes down to it, the cost of all this is going to be the deciding factor, and it’s likely to mean that whatever we settle on doesn’t make us all completely happy. But I’m determined we’re going to stick with one car rather than going back up to two. Any advice on how to manage that anyone?
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