The Sunday Telegraph Sunday 1 September 2019^ *** 15
Four weeks with three
under-fives in a French
heatwave nearly drove
Iain Hollingshead
mad – but he ended up
feeling like a better dad
Tough month made me a camper fan
I
wonder if anyone still
keeps a travel diary
these days? It hardly
seems necessary when a
quick glance at your
Google search history
provides a pretty good
flavour of your family
holiday. Here, for example, is a
selection of my searches during our
recent camping trip to France:
“Sleeping tips three children
camper van”; “Emergency dentist
Normandy”; “How much alcohol is it
safe to drink with codeine and amox-
icillin?”; “Emergency dentist Brit-
tany”; “Can baby die sleeping in
camper van at 40 degrees Centi-
grade?”; “Last-minute Airbnb under
£700 per night Ile De Re”; “Emer-
gency dentist Dordogne”; “French
word for wisdom tooth”; “Night
terrors toddler”; “How many years
does ‘terrible twos’ stage last?”;
“French adoption agencies”;
“Scraped camper van doorframe
repair cost”; “Brittany ferries change
ticket return early”.
I can no longer remember whose
idea it was to spend five weeks in
France in a rented 23ft x 10ft camper
van with a four-year-old, a three-
year-old and an eight month-old who
had just started to crawl. Back in
April, when the plan was hatched, it
had seemed like the perfect oppor-
tunity for family bonding: making
the most of my long teaching
summer holidays and my wife’s final
(I hope) maternity leave.
The skeleton plan was simple:
drift down the coast towards the Pyr-
enees; stay in beautiful campsites;
swim, canoe, cycle, light campfires,
practise singing Frère Jacques in
round form and generally audition
for a prolonged Boden catalogue
photo shoot. In the unforgiving glare
of a July heatwave however, spend-
ing 24 hours a day, most of them
awake, within 15ft of Molly (four),
Martha (three) and Fergie often
seemed like we’d bitten off more
than we could chew.
At its worst, camping takes all thetime-consuming indignities of parent-
hood, and multiplies them to an un-
sustainable level. Bedtimes were
particularly challenging – I’d like to see
Gina Ford, bestselling guru of routine,
attempt to get three excitable children
into two bunk beds in a noisy campsite
no later than 7.01pm. Most nights we
resorted to “settling” Fergie into our
10ft-high bed, taking turns to shadow
box his grinning attempts to commit
suicide as his sisters egged him noisily
on from the other end of the van.
Mornings weren’t that easy either.
Fergie’s French being still rudimentary
(we’re currently more focused on Man-
darin), he failed to understand the quiet
rule imposed by most campsites before
8am. So alternate days started with a
two-hour solo trudge around deserted
French villages, waiting for someone
to wake up and bake us a croissant.
Come to think of it, the part between
waking up and bedtime was initially
pretty unrelaxing too. I love changing a
nappy as much as the next modern
man, but I’m less keen when one’s
thrown at me by Martha at 7am and
lands in my breakfast cereal. And who-
ever said that life is all about the jour-
ney has never driven 2,000 miles with
children incapable of lasting more than
30 minutes without vomiting.
Our hygiene standards reached new
lows, sending people scurrying for
cover as our noisy white nappy bin
hove into view at each new campsite.
No wonder we were often assigned to
what we started calling the “Brexit
pitch”: on the fringes of sites domi-
nated by French and Germans, still
bound by the rules but very near the
bins. All our food had to be prepared in
a square foot of kitchen blessed with a
leaking fridge, a faulty gas stove, a
chemical loo the emptying of which
still causes me nightmares and two
children fighting to “help”.
There was a shower on board, but
we’d wisely filled it with wine bottles
instead, prompting Molly to ask: “Why
are you two drinking so much on
this holiday?”
“Because we foolishly decided to goTOUR DE FRANCE
camping with children,” I didn’t reply.
At the start of the second week I asked
my wife: “What’s that dreadful smell?”
“I think it might be you,” she replied.
At least the good weather meant that
we could always step out of the van and
admire other families coping much
better than us. A particular low came
one afternoon in the Dordogne, watch-
ing a beautiful Dutch family play
boules, while ours squabbled over
whether to watch The Incredibles or
The Aristocats on a DVD player we’d
spent the first fortnight pretending
was broken.
Washing up at 10pm (a chore we
fought over, as it provided welcome
time out), in a communal block in 36C(97F) heat with a sweating Fergie
strapped to my back, I found myself
thinking: at home we have a dish-
washer; cots; fans; a washing machine;
plumbing; a house with walls between
its four separate bedrooms. I like home.
Returning to the van, I found an
exhausted Molly and Martha having a
shouting match over the duvet and
calmly tried to persuade them to go
to sleep.
Me: “When are you going to start
listening to me?”
Martha: “I will start listening when
I’m 19.”
Me: “Look, this isn’t working. Shall
we just go home?”
Looking back, I’m glad that no onecalled my bluff. For slowly – and very
unsurely – we ended up having a
wonderful time, both as individuals
and an increasingly close-knit family.
A beaming Molly learned to cycle
far enough to get the morning
baguette; Martha started making
French campsite friends. Bedtimes
were lightened by card games, wres-
tling matches and boys vs girls foot-
ball (I let them win).
One of the best things about camp-
ing is that it encourages children to
be more grown-up; and grown-ups to
be more childish.
What’s more, you rarely have to go
anywhere. You wake up in a natural
playground of friendly campsite
dogs, inquisitive otters and rivers
waiting to be dammed and panned
for gold. You spend the day among a
menagerie of farm animals, injured
beetles and dead crabs – many ofwhich Molly lobbied, not always
unsuccessfully, to take with us. You
drift off to sleep to the dulcet sounds
of owls, distant waves, the French
air force practising and other
people’s children having tantrums
in German.
And although every day was still
punctuated by moments of abject
awfulness, most of them also
crammed in more happy memories
than an entire month at home. The
children grew closer and ever more
curious; their parents more tolerant.
We all learned to take joy in the unex-
pected, the big and the small: visits to
caves, as well as triumphant cycle
rides through industrial estates to
find more chemicals for the loo.
And as a father, I learned when to
take a parental back seat – and when,
perhaps, not to; how lucky I am to
have so much time with my family;
and how very much I appreciate
having a full-time job.
Would I do it again? Probably not- at least until the children are a
bit older. We came home after 31
days, almost a week early. But I
don’t regret it for a moment. No time
spent with your children should
be regretted.
Meanwhile, as we wait for nostal-
gia to take its rose-tinted course, I
consult my Google “diary” once
more. Two entries jump out since our
return:
“Mark Warner all-inclusive holi-
days summer 2020”.
“Dentist London”.
I’ve got root canal surgery next
week. I’m rather looking forward to
some “me time”.
FAMILY
There was a shower
on board, but we had
wisely filled it with
wine bottles instead
Awful moments... but
most days crammed in
more happy memories
than a month at home
MOTORHOME FROM HOME
Molly takes to the water (above); mealtimes were intimate affairs (below)NA PPY
BIN ON
WHEELS
Writer Iain
Hollingshead
with children
Molly, Martha
and Fergie as
they take in the
fresh air outside
their summer
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