On tour

May has been holiday time for the last few years and 2017 was no exception.

Dad's condition earlier in the year made it difficult to know whether to go away separately or as one big family.  As it turned out, shortly after the diagnosis of mixed dementia in February, we booked a cottage in East Sussex for 10 of us, 4 generations of the family from great-grand parents down to the youngest, my son Harry who is just 8 months old.

No one knows what the future will bring but most of us accepted that this could well be our last family holiday with all of us involved and could well be dad's last chance at a holiday.

I write this now a few weeks after the holiday and I'm still happy that it was the right thing to do, to try to bring us all together.  Did every single person have their most amazing holiday ever? Probably not, but hopefully most of us brought something away that we can draw on in the coming months and years.

Let's start at the beginning.  I knew I wanted to run the parkrun in Hastings which sees runners run 2.5k each way up the seafront.  It was a windy morning but I managed a new PB of 27.23, a whole minute less than previous PB in April.

This was to be the only chance of a run during the week stay, however plenty of walking followed.

Walking for me, that is.

It seems I have quite comfortable shoulders as my son, Leo seemed to spend a lot of the time on them.

Here he is as we walked (or I walked) through the sheep fields around the cottage we stay in:

Here we are at Rye Castle:

Before we went I wanted to refer to the week as a 'trip', rather than a holiday.  This was not to be a week relaxing by a pool, cocktails in-hand.  While 'holiday' can mean different things to different people, I was hesitant to call it a holiday for us all.

For me, it was a chance to send more time with the kids, and the lack of wi-fi meant I had much less contact with the outside world (including work) than usual.

For my mum, who had up to that point been dad's main carer, it was some time to have some extra support from us.

For dad, who knows.  I don't mean that flippantly, only to say that we don't know.  He went back with mum and some of the others 2 days early.  Unfortunately his mobility had deteriorated so much that he was unable to leave the cottage during his stay and spent much of the time in a wheelchair.  Here he is spurring on little Harry:

It was a trip, a trip from leafy Essex down to East Sussex.  We all came back, albeit on different days, and I think we've all got something we can carry with us.  If it was to be our last holiday together, then I for one will draw on those memories.