The funny things every mum does on holiday

If you think back to your childhood, you may find there’s one family member who stands out for her particular leadership around the planning and execution of your holidays. From destination to wardrobe, menu to companions, Mum was, in the grand words of George W Bush, The Decider.

Of course, when you look back, you may not actually be able to see your mother, because she was always the one taking the photos, and appears in few - and when she does appear, while the rest of you are pulling faces, she’s on the edge. Perhaps she doesn’t like her swimming costume.

Ahead of Mothering Sunday, we asked our travel experts to tell us all about their mothers. However, while the same crowd was more than happy to lampoon their dads on holiday before Father’s Day, they were a bit more delicate around the subject of their mothers (could it be the guilty suspicion that your mother actually saw holidays as a chore?)

Here are their answers to this question: What was your mother like on holiday?

Planning

I’m an only child, and my mother planned the hell out of every trip we went on. She planned it down to the minute - but forgot to budget in time to relax; my father and I realised eventually that going on tours was the best model, as it took the stress off of her.

***

My mother was very specific about what constituted a holiday. A holiday wasn't a holiday unless we were taking the ferry to Sweden. A holiday had to involve camping. The camping would always happen next to lakes. We would ideally pay a visit to our friends in Umea, which lies to the north, so we could hang out with proper Scandinavians. There would also be quite a lot of driving (I'm not sure if this was a requirement, but it was certainly a by-product.)

Packing

I am one of five children. My mother would pack everything but the toilet and then lose most of it around wherever we were staying - my grandma's, friends’ houses, a caravan, the beach (we never stayed in hotels). It's no wonder I'm OCD and have a recurring nightmare about packing and missing the plane.

Entertaining

The defining characteristic of our holidays was the book box. My mother is a voracious reader: a minimum of one novel a day, pretty much. It doesn't matter whether it's Dick Francis or Louisa May Alcott, JK Rowling or Albert Camus (in French). She reads. And, when we were kids, we read with her. Her biggest fear was that she would run out of books before the end of the holiday, so she had a vested interest in encouraging the rest of us to bring along an absurd amount of literature as well. Our packing was 40 per cent equipment, 10 per cent food, 50 per cent books.

In the evening, she'd read stories to us. During long car journeys, we'd listen to audiobooks. Crouched by the camping stove, we'd read and read and read. I'm surprised Sweden put up with it, to be honest: all that dramatic landscape, and there I was devouring another Swallows and Amazons book, while studiously ignoring the world around me.

I think my mother's ground rules for a holiday are pretty much the same these days, but the packing has been considerably reduced. Her Kindle has seen to that.

Navigating

My mum had huge shoulders when it came to our holidays, organising multi-leg trips as adventurous as they were cultural. But, doing it on her own for three kids for the majority of my childhood sometimes became her undoing.

I remember her pulling over to the side of a road in Naples, which we had been driving around, lost, for 45 minutes, to have a cry. I think a similar thing happened in one of the car parks around Pompeii. On the same trip, probably, she dragged my brothers and me around the classical sights of Florence and Rome. We basically did a Grand Tour, peppered with nervous breakdowns.

And I remember precisely the moment she became a relaxed person.

We were due in Durban to pick up a hire car for the first leg our South African family Christmas. But the flight from Manchester to Dubai, where we would connect to Johannesburg, and then onto Durban, was delayed, then cancelled. We were put up in a hotel before being bussed to Birmingham the next morning, from where we flew to Dubai.

We'd missed our first connection, so sat in the airport for 12 hours before flying south.

By the time we reached Johannesburg, we'd missed many more connections, so were delayed again reaching Durban. Once we reached Durban, it became apparent that our bags had not made the same trip.

Then we learned that the hire car company, believing us to be dead or lost, had given our car away.

That zenith of stress somehow turned the tide for my mum: her worry evaporated into the atmosphere: she might as well enjoy our holiday. From that point, she was never the same - but in a good way.

Protecting

Mum would smother us in sun cream before putting a nylon T-shirt on top. Then the sand would cover us, too, making us sticky itchy and sandy. She would then lie in the sun without sun cream and never actually get into the water.

Dressing

On holiday, Mum wore the same pair of flip flops, bought from Alderney, from 1975 to 1995 because they were comfy.

For me and my sister, she would sew an entire holiday wardrobe from the latest Clothkits catalogue, including summer dresses with elasticated arms that were always too tight. And when she was packing, she’d have a tantrum when she couldn’t find the one item she had decided we absolutely were not allowed to travel without (headscarf to match our Clothkits dungarees, for example).

***

My Mum would spend hours agonising over which swimming costume to take. She'd then wear it under her clothes (which she never took off) and I've never seen her in the sea beyond her knees in my life.

Location

We always holidayed in England – I'm from a family of four kids and my mum and dad were teachers, so they had lots of holiday time but not so much money – so my childhood memories revolve around the perils of British beach holidays.

Feeding

My mother packed three hot flasks of coffee, tea and hot chocolate on pretty much any trip, along with fruit of every kind to anticipate three young and slightly contrary children. Bacon sandwiches. Egg sandwiches. Cheese sandwiches. Bars of Cadbury's chocolate. Tea, biscuits, water and crisps.

This gourmet spread came out whenever a holiday required a long-distance drive. Mum, who bore the drudgery of household cooking day after day, would be up at 4am on holidays, too, to prepare. Of course she never got to enjoy any of it, for as soon as the car engine started and we were on our way, Mum would fall into a head-dropping, snore-punctuated sleep while we munched away happily in the back. Oh well.

Drinking

My mother used to have a rule on summer holidays that my brother and I were not allowed to get into the pool until an hour after we'd finished lunch. She led us to believe this was because swimming after eating can make you sick. But she later admitted, once we were old enough to swim without her watching our every move, that this had been a bare-faced lie. It was actually so she had an hour to sleep off the rosé before resuming her role as lifeguard. We literally had a timer. I'll probably spin the same yarn if I ever have kids - seems like a perfectly sensible drown-prevention policy to me.  

***

My parents divorced when I was just two, so they took turns to take me on holiday. Trips with Dad were what you'd expect of a middle class family living in Buckinghamshire. A seaside cottage in North Cornwall or Southwold. A farm stay in Normandy. A week in Cape Cod.

Holidays with my young mother mainly involved Butlin's - I became intimate with both the Bognor Regis and Minehead branches. The kids were mostly left to their own devices and would subsist on a daily diet of toffee apples and arcade games (remember the Arabian Derby?). She lounged by the beach reading Jilly Cooper. Then came evenings watching the Redcoats dance the Agadoo (while Mum and the other parents put the world to rights over several sherbets).

We went further afield, to Tenerife and Mallorca, when I was a teenager (and mature enough to join in the drinking). As a 16-year-old I remember (just about) a raucous evening, just the two of us, doing shots of Aftershock and dancing at an Irish bar in Playa de las Américas. Then I drunkenly gave all of my holiday spending money to a dodgy street hawker for a gold chain that turned my neck green.

Alcohol was an integral part of all holidays with mum. While I recall no cultural diversions, we explored the local town, found nice beaches (tanning was also important), and did a bit of shopping. But a big seafood lunch and a jug of sangria was paramount. She had to work long and hard to save for our holidays - having fun and letting her hair down was what mattered.

Modern parents might balk at this sort of family holiday philosophy. But I still laugh thinking about our budget breaks to Butlin's and the Canaries - they are some of my happiest memories.  

Lounging

Getting ready for the beach with four kids was a marathon. She'd make everyone sandwiches (many varieties), make sure we packed everything we needed (shoes, swimmers, goggles, spades, buckets, underwear, towels, books – you name it), send us off in waves and by the time she got to the beach she was so exhausted she snoozed away the rest of the morning.

We went to the beach every year and she hates sand – apparently it gets under her fingernails. So we'd sit on the rocks. On the beach.

She spent hours re-applying suncream to whichever child happened to be nearby. If it was left to Dad, I'm pretty sure we'd have all burnt to a crisp. Like he did.

Documenting

She was always taking pictures. Which we hated. But are now incredibly grateful for. She’s not in too many of them.