Day 2, Sunday - To go or not to go?

Our day started normally enough, if waking up in a posh Cheshire hotel when you think you should be in France can ever be called normal. Louise woke at 6.30 which is very normal for her, Jo would sleep til lunchtime if left alone. Went down to breakfast at 8am and while the three of us set about a hearty British plateful, David turned green and disappeared at speed. "What's the matter with Daddy?" was answered with my 'mustn't worry the children' voice that didn't even fool the 17 month old Joanna - "I expect he's forgotten something, Darling, now eat up nicely."

Phoned my Dad - he'd had a nice holiday, forget where. Phoned Mum - she's got a cold worrying about us taking the children to furrin parts. Phoned the garage - he said "What do you want, miracles? Phone back at 2pm" Didn't know what to do with ourselves, stuck in deep countryside, no transport, father ill and kids expecting a bucket and spade experience as promised. I remembered that some friends of ours lived somewhere in the vicinity and rang them, (thank goodness for pay phones, no mobiles back then). They came and took us back to their very nice house whereupon David retired to bed for the day. His sickness continued all day, poor thing. The rest of us ditched being F Nightingale wanabees and took all the kids to a pub, which seemed the right thing to do under the circumstances. He was no better when we wove our way back, so we called a quack who said it was a bug and he could travel on tomorrow.

The car being ready mine host drove me out to get it and thought he would have to call a doctor to me when I saw the price of the repair. That cost, coupled with the hotel and the meal, (so nice, so sick, so quick) was more than the total cost of the holiday budget. Maybe we should have turned round then and headed for home, the writing was on the wall for all but the most myopic. Our hospitable friends fed us well and the kids went to bed happy and tired having had a strange but entertaining day. I went to the pub and left the invalid to babysit - it's an ill wind ...

Expenses £
Holly Lodge Hotel 33.97
Car repairs 70.60
Pub spends 2.00
phone calls 0.46

Day 1 - Saturday, travelling or not?

We didn't set off until 11.30, a serious tactical error. The roof rack was hard to pack and lash down, and no, we hadn't practised that part of it. We got as far as the Burtonwood services on the M62 when the radiator boiled over. An RAC man arrived after about an hour, flushed it out and we set off again. A few miles down the road - same thing. This time we waited for 1 hour 15 mins before another RAC man turned up, only to tell us that the radiator is duff and we need a new one - terrific! All this time the girls have been really good, maybe oblivious to the situation, only vaguely wondering why we aren't moving.

We limp to the nearest service area to be told now that not only has the radiator gone but we need a new cylinder head gasket - even more terrific. The mechanic further complicates matters by informing my husband, David (who doesn't drive and knows less than nothing about cars), that "You can't just change it, you have to skim the head first" - What?! Oh and by the way, "We can't do that until Monday, sorry!"

OK, so now what to do? Go home? How negative! Limp on and hope to stay with a friend further down the motorway and chance getting it done on Monday? Not an option. Phone the RAC again? Why not? So now the third RAC man was on the way, leaping into his little van, (they were little in those days), and comes to look at the car. By now it's the most looked at car on the motorway and if he does that thing of pursed lips, sharp intake of breath and shaking head, I might thump him, because I'm fed up and it's damned hot.

But no, my hero knows of a garage who will fix it tomorrow. But, I say, it's Sunday tomorrow. He's very matter-of-fact "They work a 7 day week", he assures me. Now in 1978 that's quite something and I don't think I believed him until he had towed us there (at the best speeds we had done all day) and deposited me with the garage man in some little outback in Cheshire - we didn't really know where we were until he told us he had booked us a hotel in Holmes Chapel - at a price. So in a day we had managed to travel from Formby to Holmes Chapel, a distance of about 50 miles which we would have expected to take an hour on a bad day ...

Lovely hotel, we bathed the kids and put them to bed after tea and then had a lovely meal with wine. Very relaxing and all the better for being unexpected. So we were down a day, didn't really matter.

Expenses £
Petrol 5.07
Meal (Burtonwood) 2.39
Tea (Knutsford) 1.30