Linda’s Blog: Around The World In 80 Days

Linda shares her long-awaited family adventure.

It wasn’t the world and it certainly wasn’t 80 days but it was as close as I’ve got to travelling for a long time.

When the children were young I wouldn’t have contemplated it - too tired, too complicated and frankly too expensive when they weren’t going to remember it. As they’ve got older it’s become very clear that happy children mean happy parents and so if there was a pool and ice cream, we were onto a winner. But then the oldest became a teen, our friend exclaimed that we only had 5 family holidays left, and suddenly it felt like the pressure was on. 

As students, my husband and I had quite a few travelling adventures. Some better than others (the night in a cockroach ridden room that stank of a Peruvian town’s fish processing plant stands out as a particularly low point) but each one worthwhile and a few destinations were so good we vowed to return.  

One of those was Sri Lanka and we decided it was time to make that happen. Two decades on with two children in tow, we realised we had to do it differently: hostels were out and so was arriving somewhere not knowing where we’d sleep that night. 

In the lead up, friends kept saying “the girls must be excited”. In truth, despite our best efforts to explain, they didn’t really understand what travelling meant or know what to expect. We didn’t help our cause when we got carried away reminiscing and included long bus journeys, sharing noisy dorms with strangers and the inevitable upset tummies.  The distaste and fear on our girls’ faces served as a strong reminder that you always have to cater to your audience!

I also found it hard to feel excited, instead feeling overwhelmed by responsibility for the children’s experience and worries about the many unknowns. How would they cope with constantly changing locations, the spicy food, the high temperatures and above all, the long drives given they both get violently car sick? 

Fortunately my fears proved unfounded (we packed a LOT of Kwells) and whilst there were definitely some uncomfortable situations when things didn’t go to plan, it is these fails over which we later laughed, bonded, and in time honoured tradition, have become the funny stories we share. 

Returning home I felt triumphant, only to be utterly crushed when the teen repeatedly declared to anyone who asked that the best bit was 15 minutes on a jet ski. Proof if ever we needed it that however hard we try, our children will not always respond as we’d hope and they can embarrass us as much as we embarrass them! 

Setting aside the mortification I continue to feel about that, and acknowledging that I would probably have become bored by temples at her age too, this trip has marked the start of a new chapter for our family. The children are old enough to carry their own bags, embrace something different, and cope when things don’t quite go to plan.  We clearly still need to work on their appreciation of the cultural highlights but even Phileas Fogg had to start somewhere! 

Linda is a lawyer with two children. She and her husband both work full time and juggle the school run and everything else between them.