Jolly holiday?

Assuming good traffic/roads, it would take five non-stop hours to travel from here to Cowes, IoW. I only chose Cowes because it’s a place I know to be on the IoW. But travelling in a car of eight, I can pretty much guarantee those five non-stop hours would become 7-1/2 to 8 stopping hours (if not even longer). This estimate is based on Google’s road travel time and doesn’t count the ferry bits and bobs. Naturally, if the traffic/roads turned out to be not good, you could be staring down the barrel of a ten-hour trip. One way to reduce the travel time would be to take just three or, possibly, four in the car. But that opens up the big question of what to do with the four left at home. If there were five left at home, that question becomes null and void.

Why the IoW? It came up in conversation as a place that doesn’t require passports because this Government, in its fervent and hardened desire to see nobody work hard coupled with its desire to see the plebs not enjoying themselves abroad, have caused the entire civil service to go on strike. And the civil service, amongst other tasks, renews and issues passports. So well done to this Government.

Of course The Lake District exists (Penrith 3h 45m with a likely stopping travel time of 5 hours), but it’s in England and that is a factor. Scotland exists (Ayr 6h with a likely stopping travel time of 8h).

Wales also exists (Aberystwyth 3h 50m with a likely stopping travel time also of 5 hours, or Bannau Brycheiniog with a likely stopping travel time also of 5 hours).

At this point I feel like I’m standing in a barrel trying to find a corner to pee in. I think the decision on holiday destination is above my paygrade. I need to consult all branches of the management on this before I even unpack the task of finding accommodation for four plus four. Of course, we could always take the caravan, which would solve the accommodation issue (probably – it’s untested at this time), but towing the caravan to any of these destinations increases the travel time by X (where X = a value of time I’m currently unable to calculate because I’m occupied with trying to find a corner to pee in).