Road trip to Scotland

This October half term we headed up to Scotland to spend a few days with Adelaide, Rob, Josy and Peggy.  It was our first road trip with Audrey, and I was a bit nervous.  Leo at her age HATED the car.  Vehemently.  I think it was because he was used to falling asleep either in the sling or on the breast, so when he became sleepy in the car he would get absolutely frantic, presumably wanting to be nursed to sleep.  I have breastfed my babies in most places and positions, but I draw the line at leaning over the car seat.  We had a handful of disastrous car journeys during which Leo wailed unhappily the whole time, and I became a wobbly, nervous mess.  After that, we avoided driving anywhere and favoured the train, where Leo could sleep contentedly in the sling.  It was only at around 8 months, when he graduated to a front-facing seat and when I could ply him with rice cakes, that Leo started being able to sit in his car seat for any length of time, and that driving became an option again.  

Leo at 8 months

It was with some trepidation, therefore, that we embarked on the 445 mile journey to Crook of Devon where Adelaide, Rob, Josy and Peggy elected residence in July.  We planned lots of pit stops:  on the way up we stopped overnight in Priory Farm to spend a few hours with Grandma, Granddad, Daisy, Bob, Finn, Ash and Toby, and on the way back down we had lunch with Fred's school friend Mansel and his wife Chloe who live near Edinburgh, stayed overnight at the rather fancy roadside hotel at Tebay Services called Westmorland Hotel, and stayed another night in Priory Farm, where we watched New Zealand beat Australia in the Rugby World Cup final at Twickenham.  

On the whole, the road trip went okay.  I wouldn't say that Audrey was a natural, but she coped pretty well.  She fell asleep fairly easily but tended to wake up after 25/30 minutes (which is what she does in the buggy and crib).  She would look around contentedly for 1-1.5 hours, but then she would get tired again, or hungry, or both, and demand a pit stop.  I sometimes succeeded in coaxing her back to sleep by holding my hand over her eyes or on her tummy. It would have been fine if there hadn't been so much traffic coming back, which doubled the length of the trip.  The boys, of course, were no trouble at all:

All that time on the road was well worth it, though, to spend a few days with Ads and her crew, and admire their new place.  We went for a walk (grown ups and littlest two) / bike ride (Oscar, Josy and Leo) around Loch Leven on our first day, and a very picturesque walk along a ravine to Castle X on our second, with pooh stick races and bear hunts to keep us going.

Unfortunately, Leo was then quite ill the following day, and the fourth day we discovered our car battery was flat just as we set off to visit a boathouse and a castle.  So we had two pyjama days of music, bananagrams, Monopoly and just hanging out - something we never, ever do but which is rather nice from time to time, especially in such good company!  On our last evening Josy had a Halloween disco at school so the children - and Ads - all dressed up.