2088 miles, 80 ice creams, 120 swims and lots of fun later and we are home, with only one hour delay during the whole journey! Now it’s just  10 loads of washing, two runs of the dishwasher, a tent, boat, snorkelling equipment, 5 chairs, a table and a car to clean and we can relax to a roast beef dinner, Bill chocolate ice cream (make that 85 ice creams) and bottle of red (our last for a while – detox). 

Oh and did I forget to say, Joe’s wobbly tooth just fell out!!!!!!! Happy holiday memories made.

We are on our way home, a 6.00 start, not even dawn, followed by a silent 45 mins of packing up beds and tent, removing ourselves from the comfort of our shelf and we even made the 7.05 tunnel slot.

Now the 530 miles to our overnight stop. Not a bad service station view mind you…

Yeh its souvenir day and I really want a boyfriend sorry that was predictive text, I am only 10 so I really want a handbag. So I began the day with that thought in my head. All through the day I was looking for handbag shops but it wasn’t hard because there were lots of them,me and mummy just wanted to find the perfect one, found it…

So in Australia it was a stringray, in America it was a bear and today, amongst the feet of swimmers it was a small octopus – I am Gerald Durrell of the Briffa’s. So on a more serious note this campsite just gets better and better. Following a lovely trip to the Cinque Terra, well two of them at least, where like cut flowers, as soon as we took our kids out of water they quickly wilted and despite the threat of imminent expiring from our lovely daughter, we were able to experience a lovely platter of local ham, cheese and beer – Bill was in heaven, we also had a lovely ice cream, yes another and a lovely swim, yes another.

Today we rented sun-loungers, the pinnacle of my holiday and spent a fun day snorkelling. Joe has perfected snorkelling without actually being in the water, due to his recent encounter with a rogue jelly fish yesterday ( he was very brave ).

4 in the moring and were are all scampering to the car. It was cold I was tired but that would stop me I was pumped and ready to go.

For two hours I tried to sleep but it failed due to joes constant blabbering about his wobbly tooth. 

I’m now going to cease my blogging about the car journey because it was so incredibly boring that I’m not going to say anymore about it.

We pulled up at the campsite ‘Paradise Plage’ near Neuchatel in Switzerland to find that part of it was under a motorway, great I’ve sat in the back of a hot car for ten hours to come to a place built under a bridge not quite what you would see on the front of a Toblerone box.

Half an hour later the tent was up and pitched as far from the motorway as we could get it. It was now the moment to see in this plage was really paradise. We went through a small forest to get to the pebbly beach. Wow to our amazement it was beautiful and clean beach with water as clean as the day and a warm Swiss afternoon sun beaming down on us. After a about an hour of sun bathing and swimming out and back to the pontoon it was about time for bed.

3.30am start to get the train to France. So begins our summer holiday in Italy. A night in Switzerland,  a few days by lake Maggiore followed by a few nights near Florence then who knows.

Less than an hour into the first day and Joe announces he has a wobbly tooth, about five times, there is a sinking feeling that this may be a long journey.

As it goes the journey to our first campsite is pretty effortless punctuated by a proper briffa macaroni pie lunch that Siobhan appears to have truly nailed, nonna would have been silently proud.

The first campsite was not like it’s website, they seem to have missed the motorway running through it but it’s just one night and it sits on a lovely lake where a swim was truly enjoyed.