Number 36

I guess that once we knew Abi wasn't coming with us, we thought we'd just all travel down in the one car. But when it came to it, Dan and the miniMinx are pretty much adult sized now - height-wise, anyway - and the boot of my car just isn't *that* big, so we ended up travelling in two cars. 

And, actually, in many ways, that worked out pretty well. The Minx and miniMinx got up to whatever travelling Minxes get up to when they're travelling, while Dan and I listened to a few albums and mostly chatted about them. I started to play him The Smiths' 'The Queen Is Dead' but by the end of 'Frankly, Mr Shankley' I realised that either it was too soon (in terms of his age) for him to like it or too late (culturally). Instead, I played him 10 tracks by The Smiths, mostly the singles, which received a reasonably warm reception.

The journey down the motorways wasn't too bad but the A34 was a stinker, where we spent long periods pretty much stationary. In the end it took us seven hours to arrive just north of Poole. But it was worth the wait. The Minx had hired a converted bus for us to stay in for three nights, which stood in its own field, miles away from anything, although, happily, there was water, electricity and, fantastically, 4G.

The upstairs of the bus has been converted into three double bedrooms but it's the downstairs that I really liked, although, this evening, we spent most of the time outside, barbecuing our dinner, playing badminton (of course!) and reading our books. To be honest, the long car journey was quickly forgotten.