I hate our holiday and want to go home

[Backwoods57]

I need to rant.

Day 10 of a 13 day visit to the UK. We moved to the USA in 2014 and have to come back every year because MIL can't afford to visit us, and is scared of flying. We are in Aldershot/Farnham area. There is nothing to do apart from walk up and down dead high streets. Traffic is terrible, I smell the pollution and cigarette smoke everywhere.

If we don't come we get a massive guilt trip about MIL not seeing grandkids etc.

This trip cost $4000, we have done very little apart from visit family and sit in my SiL's cramped dirty messy house.

2 weeks of my 3 week vacation allowance has been thrown away. I have start working remotely for A. Something to do, and B so I can claim some vacation days back.

I miss my home, our dogs, I miss countryside and wildlife, I want my space back.....and tap water that doesn't taste like bleach.

So you haven't been stuck in the house not doing anything.
You sound really rude, moaning about SIL house and that she comes home early from trips to pick her children up. She is hosting and chaffuering you. You could be more grateful.
If it's that bad don't come. Tell DH fly with the kids. I've done a, lots of people do. Or make a plan and use public transport.

Nah, the OP thinks it's fun to take her little kids out to shoot animals.

'Victoria's most dodgy town' is a valid derail.

I was thinking less of her than everyone else!

@NovemberAutumn come back and tell us where your in-laws live, we're gaging to know.

Gagging even.

Seconded!

You sound homesick OP - has it just hit you that instead of feeling like you're going home to the UK - you actually left home behind? So many complex feelings about returning to the parental home - so much anticipation and expense - it's hard for it not to feel like a let down especially when it feels your money could have been better spent elsewhere. Over the years our trips home have dwindled - we've changed the way we do things, making sure we don't spend any longer than 3 days at home - all my siblings are scattered around the world too - and they have experienced similar.
Hope you can salvage what's left of your trip and enjoy some of it. Do it differently next time.

Then your partner visits alone. It can't be fun for him or MIL as your disdain for being here is palpable, even via the internet.

Thirded! If it’s the ‘Rat, I’ll be devastated 😩

DH was offered a job in the US, which didn’t work out. One of the reasons I wasn’t keen is I knew all our holiday would be spent visiting MIL and various relatives who weren’t really interested in seeing us anyway and would never come and see us (or have in fact seen us when we live 4 hours away).

if OP is British then she should have realised you need to book trains/hotels in the U.K. especially in the middle of school holidays. I mean we do the same when we go abroad.

I think lack of planning/thought isn’t the fault of MIL/SIL, as kids get older especially they will love seeing London/York wherever as well but might need some planning.

To all those trying to claim Hampshire is somewhere worth holidaying - have a day off will you. OP may be miserable as sin and pining for her Maine 'shootin' gang, but realistically, Aldershot is ALWAYS a terrible idea. That list of things they've done is absolutely woeful. 'Whipsnade, Woking, Windsor Fleet and Guildford'? WTF? I don't care whose car they drove in. Overall, it sounds like OP & her family didn't travel with appropriate funds to the UK? Unless they've been living under a rock back home in Maine, the UK's 'cost of living crisis' has been very well publicised. That aside, I make a point of not rocking up in countries I do not reside without any cash/plans, that's just plain foolish. Sadly OP's in-laws probably can't think of anywhere shitter to move, to put them off coming over again.

Sadly OP's in-laws probably can't think of anywhere shitter to move, to put them off coming over again.

How can people be so mean and grumpy for absolutely no reason? Especially when the sun is out and it's chocolate for breakfast. Take a day off.

My bother, wife and 3 kids come over once possibly twice a year from America to see me, DH, DS and parents. Parents and I do a lot to make the trip as easy as possible. Rent cars to pick up at airport, I have a child at our house each night so they get some alone time with me and their cousin. But… they plan! They are coming in June, they have booked tickets to the opera, museum exhibition tickets and 3 days in coppenhagen. Their trip is always packed! Yes, expensive but it’s a great experience for the kids to see family and have lots of learning experiences and are pretty much the only ones of their friends to have been to Europe. The UK, like anywhere is what you make it. Incidentally, I live near Farnham which is a beautiful town. I’m also American and hate the American mentality of everything is better over there because a) it isn’t and b) then don’t bother leaving!

so whilst I do feel for you, you are also moaning about something completely in your control. Next time, plan ahead. Book outside the uk school holidays for cheaper rates. Book ahead. Book an airbnb. Go to museums. Go to the theatre. Research what events are on and plan around that. Come in May/ June when there is better weather and more going on.

@RainStreakedWindows where do you go on your holidays? Corfu? Formentera? Brazil? The Maldives? Or two weeks in Aldershot at a squaddie base?

This morning get on bus to Guildford £2 . Go to Dapdune wharf for the Easter egg hunt and then walk to Stoke Park for the play area and huge area of grass.
You are right next to Normandy which has a fantastic soft play every Wed and Fri.
There is such to do around here. Your planning is poor.

Jesus might actually weep today. Is that all there is to do? Soft play TWICE a week! A park (singular). I should think this post is probably enough to have OP weeping under a weighted blanket, chanting her flight number.

She isn’t shooting animals for food, she said she does it for fun. She kills animals for fun. Pure psychopathy. They walk among us!

To all those trying to claim Hampshire is somewhere worth holidaying - have a day off will you.

Sorry Hampshire is beautiful, it's Jane Austen country and the coast only a drive away..

Whipsnade, Woking, Windsor Fleet and Guildford'? WTF? I don't care whose car they drove in

Apart from Fleet, none are in Hampshire

😂😂😂

I suspect the lack of planning was because OP really doesn't want to come over - which is fair enough really - she loves rural USA which is very different - maybe she needed to hit rock bottom and hope her DH did as well to be firmer in future and find some kind of compromise plan. I do feel for SIL here though - I can image she praying OP does something different next year at very least.

I am truly not that dense as to think the op would want to spend two days a week at a soft play. It was just a suggestion for a mornings entertainment , that is very close since she has no transport.
This area is packed with things to do as been mentioned by many people and I don't feel the need to list them again.
Except maybe Bisley rifle range!

It's not exactly a situation that commands gratitude. OP and OP's partner are already shelling out the funds for transatlantic flights every year, on account of the fact that MiL is afraid of flying and refuses to visit them. That's already a significant chunk out of their pockets, not to mention time, of which US holiday entitlements allow less.

To expect them to shell out still more money to avoid this kind of discomfort - on a yearly basis no less; not least spend additional funds on taking MiL somewhere nice when she can't even be troubled to host properly - is hardly reasonable. Recall: MiL is the one insisting on this arrangement to suit herself. Where's the compromise on her side?

The thing so many Mumsnetters fail to acknowledge when they exhort other women to take on all timely, financial and emotional burden of their husbands' families as well as their own, is that relationships are a two-way street. Also, MiL is not their mother. She's his.

It's DP who more immediately needs to come on board with a workable solution for this situation. At present, it isn't working for OP, meaning advice on lovely things to do in the southern UK are really aside from the point. She doesn't want to be here with this degree of regularity, shelling out funds and holiday entitlement from her own pot, with in-laws who don't possess the art of compromise.

This is entirely reasonable.

Ever been hiking in the woods in Maine?

I don't hunt, and didn't when I lived in the US. Like many on this thread, I'm strenuously opposed to it.

It's also clear that apex predators in the US and UK don't even compare. When I go walking in British woods I don't encounter lynx, moose or bears.

The thing so many Mumsnetters fail to acknowledge when they exhort other women to take on all timely, financial and emotional burden of their husbands' families as well as their own, is that relationships are a two-way street, and that MiL is not their mother. She's his

This also applies to the SIL as well. Who has been putting the OP up in her house, spent her time driving them around to here and there because they wont hire a car. OP is then being rude about her behind her back and calling her house small and dirty.

My sympathies lie with the SIL in this scenario- she sounds like the one who has the largest burden here and is also being royally slagged off to boot.