Itchy Feet and Titchy Feet

I’m Paul, from Whitley Bay. I’m close to 50, drive a hybrid VW, and run a travel blog that is absolutely no use if you’re trying to decide between two identical boutique hotels in Lisbon. There are no “10 hidden gems you simply must visit before you die” lists here. If that’s what you’re after, the internet is massive. Off you pop.

This corner of the web is where I document what actually happens when a slightly knackered northern bloke bundles two kids into a car and points it vaguely at Europe, with confidence high and planning questionable.

The cast (such as it is)

There’s me, obviously. Then there’s boy child and girl child, who do have real names but don’t need them splashed all over the internet, thanks very much. They are my co-pilots, snack providers, and the main reason we stop every 40 minutes for a wee.

Back home is Titchy, my partner and the sensible one. She opts out of the road trips on the grounds that being trapped in a car with us for 1,500 miles is a form of cruelty not yet recognised in law. She keeps life ticking over while we’re away and gently raises an eyebrow when I return with a glovebox full of toll receipts and a detailed breakdown of our MPG.

Planning (or, more accurately, not)

We do European road trips in a hybrid VW. I pretend I don’t care about fuel economy, but if you leave me alone for more than eight seconds I will absolutely be checking the trip computer and feeling smug about a downhill stretch in Switzerland. Routes are sketched on the back of an envelope, then ignored at the first interesting detour.

We’ve bumbled our way through France, Italy, Germany, Switzerland, Austria, Belgium, the Netherlands and a few others that probably deserve more than a petrol-station croissant and a quick leg stretch. We even made it to Costa Rica, where a lorry driver once cheerfully suggested we leave the very town he’d just driven into. Always reassuring.

What you’ll actually find here

This is not the place for drone shots, affiliate links, or reviews of how soft the pillows were. Instead, you’ll get the weird, daft, throwaway moments that seem to follow us around: a woman fishing a discarded water bottle out of a fountain full of algae and drinking it; a boy in a park misjudging a slide and taking out his own mother at full speed; me being mistaken for boy child’s brother in Costa Rica, which I plan to dine out on until at least my 60s.

There are also quieter bits: lighting candles in cathedrals across Europe for my dad, who would have loved these trips as long as he was the one driving. He isn’t, so I’m doing my best, badly pronounced German and all.

If you read along, you won’t come away with a perfect itinerary, but you might get a sense of what it’s really like to just go, with kids, a car, and a vague idea that somewhere, eventually, there’ll be coffee.

Come along for the ride

If that sounds like your sort of chaos, stick around. Read a post, leave a comment, tell me I’ve been pronouncing place names wrong. I’ll be the bloke in the lay-by, double-checking the sat nav, negotiating with boy child over crisps, and pretending I haven’t just checked the MPG again.