Made it!

Dan and Abi have been saying for a while that they want to visit my folks but the logistics around that are not straightforward; we are in Cumbria and they are in South London, which means a longish drive or train journey bookending what, during term time, would be a fairly short visit. 

In the end I decided to wait until the bank holiday weekend, which meant we'd get an extra day's stay but also meant far more chance of heavy traffic. And then it turned out that the bank holiday was the start of half-term, which meant even more traffic but also a further day in London. 

Our only hope of mitigating the journey time was to set off as soon as we could after school, so I asked them to pack the night before and I was there waiting when they got back to their mum's house. In the end we were away by quarter past four. 

Well, the first couple of hours didn't go well: heavy traffic on the M6 around Lancaster and then a diversion around the M61/M60/M56, meant it was after six by the time we got to Knutsford. I was by this stage muttering darkly to myself about 2am arrivals, not that the kids heard; Abi was wearing headphones and watching iCarly on her iPad and Dan and I were enjoying his new found love of Weezer at a fairly high volume.

But do you know what? From there on we didn't have a single hold up! From time to time we'd pass miles of stationary traffic on the other side of the motorway but we just whizzed along. It was like the Martians had invaded London and everyone was trying to get away except us.

In the end, we arrived at my folks' just before half-nine. I had promised Dan and Abi that if we arrived before ten, I would take them for a curry, so after dropping the car off and hugs with my mum and dad, we headed down to the Rupali. 

I wish I'd taken the time to get a better a photo of these two but, frankly, I wanted to get started on the poppadoms.