A Trip to the New Forest

This weekend we shoved everything except the kitchen sink into the back of the car and bundled off down the M3 towards the New Forest, to spend an impromptu couple of glorious days with the kids' grandparents on James' side.

We stayed in a beautifully quaint farmhouse air BnB complete with spooky outbuilding and a long driveway for the kids to blast up and down on their bikes. Framed in front of an idyllic sunset, it was the perfect place for a few days' break from the madness that is our house.

I'll be clear, the madness very much came with us, but at least it was diluted somewhat among vast green fields and winding country lanes, and there were two other adults available to hold screaming infants and pour an optimistic cup of tea.

On the way down the six month old suddenly decided that his car seat was now an infringement of his human rights, and that they also needed to hear about this in Prague, so for the safety of our eardrums and the other motorists on the road, we pulled over into Dobbies, a sweet but well-equipped garden centre, complete with tarantulas, terrariums and hot tubs.

We'd been watching some fantastic videos online about chameleons and how they change colour to match their environment, so naturally we had a good ten minute discussion about this poor fellow who probably hadn't expected such an inquisition on a Friday afternoon.

As the sun drifted down after a long drive and we finished off/distributed over the floor the last of dinner, we battened down the hatches and Marie got the wood-burning stove fired up, before commencing the most difficult battle yet - attempting to get excited toddlers to go to sleep on the first night of a holiday.

The New Forest

Saturday brought a crisp, clean morning of dew and birdsong that trickled with a slight chill through the trees as we toddled around one of the many fabulous walking routes in the New Forest. The kids ran off ahead to find puddles and sticks, and the nearly-four year old insisted on warning us any time we may be in danger of encountering any ferns, by yelling 'FERNS AHEAD' at the top of his lungs every thirty-eight seconds. He also required photos to be taken of said ferns in case we forgot what they look like. We love using PictureThis, a fantastic app that identifies plants through your phone's camera, and I can safely say all of our kids now know more plant species than we do, however that's not really all that difficult to be honest...

We stopped off for sandwiches and some more running around at the White Buck pub in Burley, which we'd highly recommend, before heading on to Dorchester to see my grandparents, who hadn't yet met the six month old. Under an unusually warm, dappled October sun, they delighted in watching their young and not-so-young descendents running rampage around their garden, throwing a soft rugby ball and a variety of stuffed animals around and generally doing lots of falling over and eating three days worth of Great Grandma-mandated sugar in as many hours. Great Grandpa had even hidden a stuffed lion for the kids to find in the garden, which the two-year old immediately delighted in searching for amongst the bushes and flowerbeds. Understandably really, the concept of the potential threat of a lion in the garden had the nearly-four year old rather flustered and on edge, however after a little reassurance that it was very much a pretend lion, he relaxed and joined gleefully in the hunt.

The National Motor Museum

On the Sunday we popped over to the National Motor Museum in Beaulieu to the delight of three generations of car enthusiasts. The place is packed to the brim with stunning classic cars, motorbikes and old buses, as well as a very impressive kids' playground, very reasonable restaurant and an elevated monorail that's just precarious enough to feel exhilarating without being overtly dangerous. We even found Chitty Chitty Bang Bang!

Interestingly the nearly-four year old was demonstrably upset by a particular Top Gear Montage video that was on display in one of the exhibits. It was essentially a high-octane highlights reel of Top Gear's many years of excitement and over-zealous destruction of caravans and the like, featuring some of their more dangerous stunts and lots of explosions. Given it was a bit much of a dopamine-overdose for us adults who had seen most of it before, it's not surprise it was totally overwhelming for a child who already experiences every emotion on a completely different scale already. His beautiful HLP sensitivity shone through as he meekly asked, "is the rocket going to be okay?" before it promptly exploded into smithereens in a field. While his sister stared wide eyed with the delight of a Pixar movie villain seeing her latest evil creation rise out of an underground bunker, he decided he couldn't watch any more, burying his face into Marie's shoulder, asking politely not to be told what is happening, but just to tell him when it was over. He remained unsettled for a while after this, reacting rather shortly to even minor provocation from his younger sister and generally feeling out of control, so we had a quiet sit down and a drink to recharge, before he decided he wanted closure on the exhibit, and we wandered back in to finish it off.

This is something we encounter frequently, and are starting to become more proficient in dealing with. I have always been very sensitive myself, feeling as if I experience the highs and lows of every day emotions to a greater degree than those around me. I couldn't (and still can't) watch horror movies as a child, as they wreaked havoc with my delicate imagination, leaving me with weeks of nightmares and panic as I tried to make sense of it all. Marie reports a similar experience, although to a far lesser degree. There are episodes of Doctor Who that I still struggle with even now, to give you an idea of just how sensitive I mean.

This makes it much easier for me, however, when I then look at our children and see similar characteristics reflected in their own personalities. I can sympathise more easily when they don't want to try something new or feel overwhelmed by a situation or encounter with another person, and when they just need to take a break from the world and wind down. This is one of our many reasons for homeschooling. I feel that with the right safety nets, and someone steering them gently through a world full of experiences that are intense enough already without the HLP supercharger, they will grow up to have wonderful, enriched and passionate lives full of wonder and exploration. I fear they wouldn't get this kind of guidance in school, where by necessity there simply aren't enough adults to give them the kind of attention they require at such a vulnerable age. Given we were at a motoring museum, I raised the metaphor of high learning potential children being like F1 racing cars; yes they're more temperamental, require more maintenance, specific working conditions, and have trouble with speed bumps, but when looked after and given the right opportunities in the right environment, they are capable of absolutely spectacular achievement.

A parking space picnic

I've always found it very difficult making decisions about how to spend my free time, largely because it has mostly been spent studying, or feeling guilty for not studying. So when it comes to 'what should we do next?' I find it very difficult to decide among the available options. Fortunately Marie is less neurotic on this front and so leads the way with the kids and me following dutifully behind. However when it comes to 'making do', I come into my own. I can't decide on what to do or where to go, but if you tell me 'this is what's happening and that's where you're going' then I'll make the best of the situation I'm in. Case in point when we were driving home and found ourselves stuck behind forty-five minutes of stationary traffic on a drizzle-soaked M25. We decided to cut our losses and take a break at the Clacket Lane services, wherein the new family tradition of the 'parking space picnic' was born. It's not complicated - find a parking space in a secluded bit of the car park miles away from the shops, with a free spaces around it, and get ALL the blankets, pillows, duvets and soft things out of the car to build a veritable fortress of comfort on the tarmac. Then open the car doors and boot, pump some music through the car stereo and enjoy a brief oasis of delight among a drab and dreary concrete carpark, to the amusement and sometimes outrage of those driving to the exit. The kids shrieked with delight running along the white parking space lines pretending to be trains (or even a funicular in the case of the two year old), while we chewed on makeshift sandwiches and watched out for any stray cars daring to approach the scene of joyous chaos. This only worked, of course, because the sun had decided to make an appearance at the right time, but we shall henceforth be planning our next 'parking space picnic' for years to come.

This is what we want

This was not a particularly big trip. It wasn't enormously far from home, didn't involve visiting another country and was rather tame really as far as 'holidays' go, however it was everything we wanted from our time away, and we've made memories that will last a lifetime. We spent meaningul time together as a family, walked in beautiful scenery, embraced the atelic, learned lots of cool new things about the world around us and built some fun new family traditions along the way. This trip felt like the beginning of the kind life we are hoping to build for our family, with frequent, brief impromptu adventures to beautiful parts of the world, connecting with people and learning along the way. While it was only three days in total, it felt like a proper family holiday, and every bit along the way had its own charm. Now on to the next one...