7 September to 8 November 20226
Back to school is always a bit of a shock after the long summer holiday but this year was particularly noteworthy. We were coming off an extra long (10 weeks for Ellie), extra dry (the garden was dead) and extra hot summer straight into a massive transition year.
Ellie and Sena were starting at Alleyns – Ellie into 6th form and Sena into senior school. School uniforms were a thing of the past for Ellie, and with her freshly died hair and nose stud she was looking more like a university student than a high schooler. It was all change for Sena too as she donned her new school uniform and spent days preparing her hair for the big first day.
External appearances? Sorted.
Internal nervous uncertainty? Out of control.
As the first day of school approached the nerves only mounted. Only Jessie was unaffected and couldn’t wait to get back and see her mates. We hoped that the other two would soon be in her boat, grabbing hold of all the opportunities the new school could provide.
Ellie and Sena set off a day earlier than Jessie, who had been on holiday for so long we were genuinely concerned that she would forget how to get there, or even that we she went to school at all. We were allowed to walk them to the corner of the school block, at which point Ellie unceremoniously ditched us and made her way solo. We got to hang a little longer with Sena before she was engulfed by the school welcome crew.
We then went back to our respective days, thinking about nothing other than how the girls were faring. In the evening we debriefed over the dinner table. We were hoping for a bubbly, excited download of all the great new friends they’d made and optimism about the weeks, months and years ahead.
Nope.
Silence from Sena. ‘Constructive feedback’ from Ellie about how she should still be at Sydenham.
Maybe it would be better tomorrow.
The next day they made their way solo to school, hair a little less immaculate and spirits a little lower; buoyed somewhat by Jessie charging off for her first day back.
We waiting to get the scores on the board after day 2.
Jessie came in, excited to be back. Sena skipped in too – having navigated the still unknown day one drama and beginning to find her way. Ellie however was still highly unconvinced about the merits of her decision to leave Sydenham, the value of her classes or the friendship potential of those she had met.
Hang in there, we said. Give it time. She looked unconvinced. Even after her cornflour matriculation ceremony!
Over the next 2 weeks this trend continued, even deteriorated as the first weekend past without an invite to any of the parties that were apparently weekly affairs in Alleyns 6th form. Sena put down some roots and Jessie continued from where she left last year, Ellie was still very much caught in the transition.
It wasn’t until the 2nd weekend and first party invitation that things started to look up for Ellie. We started to see the green shoots of new friendships forming, of more positive language around her new subjects, teachers and class mates. She started to realise that making new friends at Alleyns did not mean losing her old friends at Sydenham and that, in fact, the two worlds could be combined.
We felt like we were turning a corner.
Towards the end of the 3rd week back at school, Liz and I headed to Portugal for a long weekend to see Dee and Nick. At the girls’ insistence we would allow them to fly solo for the weekend, accompanied only by a fridge full of food and a minute by minute schedule for all concerned.
What could possibly go wrong? (Other than Sienna having surgery on her toe 2 days before we have to leave)
We left on Thursday afternoon, arriving in Lisbon on Thursday evening. Despite a few early challenges with the car hire we eventually our way to the hotel and had a great first night in town.
On Friday morning we headed to Praia da Adraga for an incredible fish lunch at Restaurante da Adraga before heading on to Sintra for the evening. Regular text messages and calls suggested everyone was aligned with the spreadsheet and things were moving along like clockwork.
After lunch we drove to Sintra for the night and had one of the best meals of the year. Highly recommend Nau Palatina if you are in the area!
It wasn’t until Friday evening that we realised that things weren’t quite going to plan. Ellie’s phone notified us that her Life360 app had been turned off whilst she was at Lewisham. Why was her phone at Lewisham when she was at home looking after Sienna whilst Jessie as at an ‘approved’ party?
It turned out of course that Ellie was safely with her phone in Lewisham and spent the rest of Friday night with a new group of friends from Alleyns, before heading back to the house around 130am for a ‘last minute’ sleepover with 4 of her new friends.
We were conflicted… we were elated that she was out with new friends and having sleepovers, but slightly less thrilled about the sneaking around. Something to deal with when we got home.
We continued on with our hugely relaxing parents weekend away with a walk around Quinta da Regaleira.
As we tucked into lunch at Taberna Clandestina and a well earned glass of wine in Cascais on Saturday afternoon
we got another call from the girls, letting us know that they had all managed to lock themselves out of the house.
We were thrilled that they had managed to collaborate so well to not only all walk out (separately) without keys, but that Ellie had used the spare key the night before and failed to return it. Genius. Luckily all was resolved by Jessie jumping the back fence and breaking into the house – and we went back to our wine and conversation about whether the girls were really ready to be left alone.
Answer: no.
That evening we went to dinner with Dee, Nick and the kids whilst there was yet another ‘unauthorised’ sleepover at our house. We were awoken by a frantic call that Jessie – who needed to be at school for a cadet camp at 8am – had slept through her alarm and woken at 750. Our unauthorised house guest saved the day with her parent’s Uber account and Jessie just made the bus.
So, all was well. All in all we loved Portugal this time, and immediately decided that we would get to know this area with it’s surf beaches, beautiful towns and stunning food and wine a bit more… in the first instance by holidaying there this summer.
That weekend turned out to be a turning point for Ellie. From there, it feels like she’s more ‘in her groove’ with the school, her subjects, her friends and in her own skin. Sena too feels settled – still staying in touch with her friends from Sydenham through various birthday parties (including her own) and play dates whilst also making new friends.
Going into half term (yep, another 2 weeks off after a gruelling 6 weeks back after 10 weeks off over summer) it all felt a bit more ‘sure footed’ than when we started.
We were also making headway with the house.. trying new things… like wallpaper that we put up and pulled down a week later and then finally painting and fixing bits and pieces. It was really starting to feel more like our home.
As school broke, Ant headed off to Las Vegas for a week long conference with work. The girls focussed on catch ups with mates (apparently they’re too old to be ‘playdates’ now) and preparing for Halloween.
Straight after Halloween, we jumped on a plane for our week long trip to Sicily – a much discussed destination that Liz and I had never actually got around to visiting. We were excited for a mix of city exploration, nature, hiking and of course lots of food and wine. We were cutting the ‘season’ fine – the weather is beautiful until the end of October, then gets a lot more variable in November – the month where Sicily gets most of it’s rain.
At Sena’s request, this would also be our first trial of a camper van holiday – we were both excited and more than a little curious as to how it would play out with teenage kids.
We arrived in Palermo late on Sunday evening and into the pouring rain. It was absolutely torrential. Our apartment was in the centre of the beautiful old town, right at the Quattro Canti, surrounded by a wealth of restaurants, bars and sites. In the first 24 hours we were there, it rained 60mm – and it literally looked like we were in a shower at times.
In true English fashion, we didn’t let the rain stop us. We donned our rain jackets and umbrellas and hit the town to explore the area and for a late night snack. We walked approximately 20m before we sought refuge, soaked, in the next door restaurant ‘Bisso’ which would largely become our home away from home whilst we were in town. We feasted on caponata, panelle, pasta alla Norma and (our new favourite) salad with fennel, orange, anchovies and olive oil. All washed down with Etna region wine. Yum.
We hoped that the weather would clear the next day. Sadly it did not; so we committed to exploring the town anyway, focussing our attention on the beautiful Palermo Cathedral, amazing Norman Palace – complete with it’s slightly odd ‘oriental room’ and beautiful mosaics – and of course more Sicilian food (Timilia Pizza – big thumbs up) and great coffee.
The following day, after a quick run exploring the town (once out of the historic centre it starts to feel quite edgy quite quickly) and a final lunch at Bisso, we made our way to IndieCampers to meet our new home for the next 4 days which would see us visit Cefalu and Etna.
The rain was clearing and we hoped to get a few days reprieve before it hit us again later in trip.
Ellie (who loves camping but loves the solitude of her own room and space even more) had already made her feelings known; Liz (not a natural lover of camping, mainly due to it’s highly admin intensive nature) was obviously battling to keep her internal monologue from externalising. Sena and I were more excited than not (my excitement mixed with a healthy dose of fear that we would crash the van at some stage). Jessie was somewhat on the fence about the whole thing.
We got a fairly rapid briefing about our slightly dilapidated steed before we were handed the keys. We would be staying at campsites so we immediately agreed that the toilet was out of bounds given the extensive post use admin no-one wanted to own. The kids looked at their ‘3 in a bed’ accomodation at the back of the truck with a mixture of trepidation and excitement. Liz was less subtle when looking at the bed which came down from the roof to a height of 1.5 metres (leaving about 50 cms between the mattress and the roof). The bed was accessed by a 1m long ladder… meaning that you had to scramble up via the drivers seat. So she wasn’t perfect, but for the next 4 days she was home.
We successfully navigated out of the IndieCamper site and made our way from Palermo to our first stop at Cefalu, about an hour a way. Surprisingly we made it there unscathed, pulling up into the stunning Sanfillippo campsite about 4 kms out of town, overlooking the beautiful Mediterranean. It was definitely off season and we shared the camp ground with maybe 4 other campers … luckily because we took a lot more than our ‘fair share’ of space to turn the truck around.
We parked up, and turned the ‘car’ into a camper, setting things up for the next few days. There were a few grumbles about the living spaces but overall spirits were high. We decided to head into town for an exploration and for dinner – grabbing the convenient but not regular or late running shuttle bus into town. (This is the reality of campervanning in Europe … you can’t really take the trucks into old towns – or at least park them when you’re there – so you’re mostly limited to parking in campsites and then going from there. We knew this going in so were prepared for this one).
We loved Cefalu – its a stunning medieval sea side town overlooked by a Norman fort at the top of a cliff, complete with amazing cathedral built by Roger II. We explored, ate more wonderful Sicilian food and plotted our activities for the next day. It took us a while to work out that Ubers were largely theoretical in this part of Sicily, but we eventually found ourselves a cab and made our way back to our camp site for the night.
The first night felt a lot like the first night camping in a tent: plenty of rustling as everyone tossed, turned and tried to get used to their new surroundings. In the small hours, Jessie suddenly woke up yelling, “Where am I? I can’t get out!” It turned out she’d wedged herself under a cabinet and was half still dreaming. Little did we know her words would prove prophetic for Ellie, who over the next four days would become increasingly aware of just how little alone time she was going to get
The next day the sun was out and we made our way back into town to hike the cliff and explore the Norman castle…. But not before a breakfast of multiple cappuccinos, espresso macchiatos and Italian pastries in one of the beautiful squares in town. Yum.
Satiated, we made our way up the cliffs and enjoyed the sunshine – everyone understanding that this trip was likely the last sunshine we would get before heading to Asia and Australia next March.
After the ruins, an Aranchino lunch and further exploration of the town – including the excellent Cathedral – we made our way back to our campsite to spend the afternoon playing table tennis (Sena has qualified for a national school competition and so needed to practice) and a swim in the Mediterranean, before we settled in for an evening of aperatif, snacks and Australian Masterchef. Not all bad really.
Lights out a 11pm but Liz was still tossing and turning around 1am. Suddenly I hear slightly hysterical laughter as Liz imagines herself quitting the campsite and just driving off (note: she has form for this, having done exactly that many years ago whilst camping in Lane Cove National Park in Sydney … leaving at 2pm in a squeal of brakes and high beam lights, only to come back then next morning with fresh coffees for everyone. To be fair, she was very very pregnant at the time). This time she realised that, even if she did drive off, her camping would follow her. So there was no escape.
The next morning, after a solid 15 minutes trying to work out how to extract the campervan from it’s parking spot without taking parts of the camp ground with us (or leaving parts of the camper behind) we hit the road for Belpasso, at the foothills of Mount Etna. This was our biggest driving day, some 3 hours south and east across Sicily and sadly we were leaving the sunshine we had enjoyed in Cefalu behind.
We raced the clock (well as much as one can in a campervan / truck) to get to the campsite before mandatory siesta time, arriving just after but still sweet talking our way in. We arrived in the rain and pulled into our volcanic black sand site that would be our home for the next 2 nights.
We explored options for visiting nearby towns and quickly realised that the infrastructure here was more limited than Cefalu, so we were largely bound to the campsite. We ventured out to the local supermarket, bought supplies and braved the cooking facilities in our camper, quickly adding the leaking kitchen sink to the list of issues with our trusty steed. Another learning is that cooking for 5 in a campervan is easier than without a campervan, but there’s not a huge amount in it.
That said, antipasto, ravioli and good local wines were served, so it wasn’t all bad.
By this time, Ellie was starting to fray a bit, talking fondly of the seclusion of her attic room at home and requesting that she had some quiet time in the back of the van by herself. This may have been as a direct result of 2 nights having Sena (a notorious starfish) on top of her.
Despite a few (to be fair, good natured) wobbles, we made it through another night and were on the road towards Mount Etna early the next morning. Sadly the rain had very much caught up with us and we weren’t sure we were going to see much more than the car park.
We parked up and fuelled up with more great coffee and pastries before meeting our local volcanologist Fabrizio from Etnative who would be our guide for the day. He assured us that the cloud was low and there was sunshine at 2500m where we would start our hike. We got kitted up and made our way up the cable car (which has been flattened by the volcano 5 times in the last 30 years) and then 4WD buses to get to the start of our hike.
Over the next 3 hours we explored the most active volcano in Europe (who knew?) from between 2500 and 3000m, exploring numerous craters, learning about the early warning signs, how the eruptions work and the formations, caves and gullies that the lava makes as it works its way down the hills. It was awesome – despite or maybe somewhat because of the patchy visibility in parts. The almost freezing temperatures, high winds and low clouds certainly didn’t feel the same as when we were swimming only 2 days prior. We all loved it – Ellie and Jessie in particular, and we were soon talking about other hikes and/or mountain climbs we could do (I didn’t hate this tbh!)
From there it was back to Belpasso (via a local vineyard & olive oil plantation) and back for our last evening in our camper. This time we went for takeaway pizza rather than wrestling with the cooking facilities. A cop out, but a welcome one and we settled in for our last night on the road.
The following morning we drove into Catania and dropped off the truck. The check-in felt slightly more invasive than an enema as the staff checked every inch of our banged up camper (not at our hand). We were finally released and jumped in a cab to our Airbnb in Catania – but suspect we may not have heard the last word from them.
We dumped our bags, revelled briefly at the prospect of having a proper roof over our heads tonight, and then hit the streets to explore and grab some lunch.
Fair to say, we loved Catania. The whole city was destroyed by earthquake in the 1690s and subsequently rebuilt in a beautiful baroque style using dark, volcanic basalt. The historic center is stunning, and stuffed full of great restaurants and bars filled with locals (and the odd tourist), an iconic fish market and a number of cathedrals, state buildings and the main Sicilian university.
Over a pasta lunch there was a lot of discussion around the merits on not of campervanning. There was some mention of it being slightly ‘type 2 fun’ (that was likely to be more fun after the fact than during) and a recognition that, for somewhere like Sicily, it was a bit constraining to be stuck in campgrounds rather than staying in the center of these wonderful towns and cities (like we were in Palermo or Catania).
The verdict – we liked the campervan (even Ellie and Liz) but probably more for proper ‘off the grid’ type trips where you benefit from the full independence that a campervan provides. Maybe Australia, Scandanavia or the US more than southern Europe.
This conversation got us to future trip planning, and the recognition that we felt like we are ‘running out of runway’ for family holidays. We have our Singapore/Indonesia/Australia extravaganza planned for next April and Portugal for summer but then we will be in a GSCE/A levels year in 27/28 which will limit our trips… and then Ellie will be off to university. Slightly terrifying how quickly time is going. We agreed to do something special in October 27 (as yet tbc) and then Ellie promised she would come back for a ski trip + another family holiday each year once she left for uni. We were suitably placated by this.
After lunch Liz and I ditched the kids and went out for an apero and people watching on the main square. We had our last Sicilian dinner (sob) in the fish market, reading Sena’s book for school (with loud foreign voices to Ellies delight) and then had a wonderful time just wondering the historic old town and taking in the vibe of the buskers and people enjoying their Saturday evening. It was wonderful.
And that was that was. Sunday morning we packed up, ticked off the last ‘must do’ from our Sicilian eating tour (brioche with granita) and a final coffee, bought our last fridge magnet and made our way to the airport for our uneventful trip back home.
The kids are going straight into mini exams next week. Apparently they’ve only got 4 more weeks of school before 4 weeks of holiday over Christmas. The amount of holidays these kids get is genuinely ridiculous.
