M y mum had just one stipulation when it came to our mother-and-daughter holiday: she didn’t want to do any of the planning. She would not lift a finger – payback, perhaps, for my tricky teenage years, which saw me ruin one Pyrenean road trip by vomiting on every hairpin. I tried to claim it was food poisoning rather than the result of a night of underage drinking with the campsite bad lads.
Mum, who had seen a lot in her career as an NHS psychiatrist in Morecambe, was having none of it. The Guardian’s journalism is independent. We will earn a commission if you buy something through an affiliate link.
Learn more. I suggested taking her Interrailing after she said she was envious of a solo rail trip I’d taken a few years ago. Dad tried to muscle in, but we rebuffed him: three is a bad number for a holiday and I might have regressed to childhood if outnumbered.
Being lucky enough to possess healthy parents, I have not yet had to make decisions about their lives and so it felt novel to be entrusted with our itinerary. Mum, an active 75, said she would rather go north than south, so I set about planning a route that took us from Manchester all the way to Oslo. We were away for 10 nights, our first-class passes entitling us to seven days of travel within a month, across the 33-country Interrail network.
It doesn’t cost much more to go first class – £413 for ages 28-59, and £373 for over-60s, compared with £326/£294 had we gone second class. The ticket includes an i.