I take my widowed mum away for a week each year? She was 85 when we decided to go to lovely N Wales, not far from us in Cheshire, but Mum doesn't - she said - like to sit in a car all day so didn't want to travel too far. I booked, for a not insubstantial price, what looked like a very smart house high in the hills above Caernarfon, looking out over the bay.
It's started to rain as soon as we crossed into Wales - and didn't stop for more than 30 mins for the whole week. The house was sadly neglected with black damp on the blinds, unchanged sheets in the bed and an overgrown garden - the much vaunted view obscured by high trees, the craftily photographed summer house inaccessibly perched at the top of a near vertical back garden. Worse, the house was accessed by means of a very rough path across a field of sheep; a loose rock flew up and dented the side of my new car as we negotiated it for the first time. That path then changed into a 1 in 3 concreted descent down a drive that looked like it had been transplanted from a ski jump somewhere and had been transformed into a waterfall by the rain.
We spent 6 hours a day, touring N and mid Wales, Mum resolutely refusing to leave the car because Bala, Portmadog, Barmouth, Abersoch, Harlech and many other places all were dismissed as 'nothing here', and she was completely unimpressed by the glorious scenery. I drove miles and miles - often looking for public toilets - without even the reward of a visit to a nice pub in the evening - Mum preferred to eat at Midday and watch TV until bedtime. I do dearly love my Mum, who is still fit and well at 87, but that holiday is seared deep into mind, not least because of the stronge urge to leave her in one of the many toilets we visited and run for the hills (I did resist). Oh, and it stopped raining when we hit the M56 on the way home.