Where are we going then? I’ll let Daddy answer this one.

Well, we’ve been invited to a wedding in Poland in a town called Radom about an hour south of Warsaw. Everyone else is flying over the day before the event. For the first time in our lives we’re relatively unburdened by time. I don’t return to work until May and Claire’s plan is to find a part time role once Jacob starts school in September. My income goes back to a full time wage in March and with the redundancy money we can buy a car, pay our bills and go on holiday until then. We won’t get an opportunity like this until the kids are grown up. We do have a few commitments, but we should be able to give ourselves a good month to get to the wedding and around 10 days to get home. That way Jacob can still spend his birthday with the whole family.

I’ve been thinking about a route through France, Switzerland and northern Italy then down towards Serbia and on to Poland via Romania, Hungary and Slovakia. I’ve spent several evenings plotting a course on Google Maps to see how it could be done. I don’t want to subject the kids to 3-4 hour drives if I can help it but we will have to keep a decent pace up to visit everywhere. We’ll still be pretty flexible and we plan to change course as we go, only thinking two or three days ahead. Usually for a two week trip we’d book up hotels in advance and know exactly what we’re doing on a meticulously planned itinerary. We aren’t really true ‘backpackers’ in the sense of just turning up at an airport and seeing what happens. There’s a lot to admire about that experience but we have never had the time to risk wasting days where nothing happens. This time though, we can afford to drift a little, which is a difficult concept to capture on a spreadsheet. The fundamental elements of planning it will remain, we need to budget for accommodation, food and drink, fuel and activities.

The most important thing, though, is making sure that every member of the family gets something from the experience and is happy along the way. We need to have a plan for awkward bed situations as it can be limiting trying to find somewhere that offers a double, a single and a cot. We need to be able to find a park and let the kids play. We’ll need to keep the car fueled, our stomachs full and make use of WiFi when we can.

It’s extremely exciting, and although it’s still over a month away I’ve already got a nervous anticipation about it. It’s a step into the unknown, we’ve never been on holiday with two children before, we’ve never been away for this long and we’ve never allowed ourselves to be this loose in terms of an itinerary with very little purpose.

Sometimes it’s a little better to travel than to arrive.