Hell, France
Some good stories so far but I reckon this one outstrips most of the European journeys by a distance...

I would have been about 15 and already 6 ft tall. In his infinite wisdom my father decided that flying wasn't for us and that we should drive the 1000 or so miles from home (near Blackburn, Lancs) to our French campsite. In a Montego. Which isn't anywhere near as big as it looks. Into which was packed me, my similarly-sized brother, both parents and my sister who would have been about 8. And all our luggage.

Again using some of his already-legendary wisdom, Papa insisted we set off at 5am to ensure we arrived at Dover in plenty of time to catch the ferry. So off we went. Within four miles my mother realised she had absolutely agonising cystitis, so we then had to spend the first 3 hours driving round Bolton and then Manchester to find a duty chemist. Eventually we did, but by then Papa's plan was off schedule and he had to average over 100mph to catch up. Mama, meanwhile, was having to make him stop at every services so she could make pee, which didn't improve his temper.

This would have been bad enough, but my brother was (still is, and always has been) a natural born gold medal standard aggravating twat. My normally placid sister, rather than become the butt of this behaviour, joined in thus doubling the fun. Were it not for the presence of my increasingly irate parents, there would have been two corpses in the back of that car with me, which would have been vastly preferable. In fact, the odds on which of us was to become a murderer first were falling all the time on that journey.

Anyway, somehow I managed to make it down to Dover without losing my hair/ rag/ sanity. At this point my father informed me, for the first time, that the ferry wasn't due to leave for another EIGHT HOURS and that we would now be sleeping in the car. Should I therefore stretch out on the pavement, then? Oh no, because there were a lot of nutters about in the Dover ferry car park (there weren't) and we should all sleep in our seats!!!! This was obviously impossible, so my brother and I stretched our feet out of the windows, thus ensuring that any nutters could have had their fill of whatever it was Papa determined needed protecting.

Cue the next morning, we boarded the ferry. OK, now the journey got a little better - unlike some of the stories on here we got a smooth crossing and no-one was seasick. But I, in taking advantage of the complimentary full english breakfast managed to get the most salmonella'ed underfried egg I've ever had the misfortune to try. Miraculously, this didn't manifest itself until the moment we hit the campsite though my guts were turning over for the last 150 miles (and it was deinfitely that egg because we didn't stop to eat again!).

Apart from the constant aggravation and frequent piss stops we managed to make it to the campsite, whereupon I immediately had to go rid my body of everything inside it, repeatedly, for the entire first week. We couldn't locate an English-speaking doctor, my folks arguments made World War 2 seem like a minor disagreement over cutlery and my brother, who remained blissfully sickness-free, went into the woods with a Swiss boy to be given large quantities of free narcotics. The shit. While I could barely move from my bed.

My mothers' cystitis remained a feature of the holiday until we returned, and though the journey back was otherwise relatively calmer we did hit a four hour traffic jam on the M6. The best bit, though, was the day after we returned, when my dad suggested we all sit down "and decide where we're going next year", on the grounds that it would probably be our last family holiday together. As one, we told him where to shove it... and duly, that disastrous nightmare of a fortnight was our last holiday together. The French were a load of up-their-own-arses cuntwads, too...

I would apologise for length but be glad it wasn't as long as the fecking journey... also I'm a caaaant!
(keeferreefer, Tue 12 Sep 2006, 14:39, Reply)