I need another holiday ...

When I was a kid, I remember family holidays as something to look forwards to. Adventure, arguments in the back of the car about who had the most (least) leg room around the stuff we’d all packed, and, back in the days where sitting on your duvet and all the family pillows was still perfectly fine, snuggling into them on long journeys to tents, caravans, airports and ferries.

What I didn’t appreciate at the time was how many of those family holidays really weren’t holidays for my parents. Not really anyway. 

We were lucky. As a child I got to travel and see parts of Britain and Europe, visit castles, beaches and mountains (and complained a bit about having to get off my bum to walk / cycle to some of them). But all of that took planning. And organising. Deciding where and when to go, how long for. How to get there. Where to stay. What to do once we got there. It all takes time. And energy. 

Since my 20s, I’ve gone from loving travel, to hating it. Loving the adventure, to despairing of the sheer amount of organisation I had to do to go anywhere, (probably still have to – I just didn’t realise it last time!). I still wanted to travel, but I had to do the figuring out for myself, the planning and details don’t get done with the wave of a magic wand. 

Self-catering family holidays are pretty much guaranteed to not be a holiday for at least 1 person on that holiday. In fact, it’s more stressful than just staying at home for a week … because you can pretty much guarantee that the ‘fully equipped kitchen’ will be missing the 1 item you need to prep whatever it is you planned to cook …

There are some advantages in returning to the same place on a regular basis – you know where you’re going and what there is to do. But for me, that takes a large part of the fun out of travelling and seeing new places, trying new food, experiencing different cultures (and languages). I lose enthusiasm when the holiday I’m planning doesn’t hold that spark of the unknown. I had no motivation.

Holidays weren’t relaxing any more. Deep down, I still wanted to travel and see the world, I just couldn’t face the hassle of organising it any longer. (Thanks Mam and Dad for sticking with it!)

Hopefully, as my little girl gets older, it’ll get easier again. I've got my travel mojo back. 

The adventurer has returned, and is ready to go …