My older brother and SIL moved up to Cumbria from Surrey about 4yrs ago. This is approx 330 miles from the town where my parents (in their mid-60s) live. I live in the next town to my parents.
Their move was not sudden as they'd had a property up there that they'd rented out for about 10yrs and always talked about moving up there.
Since they moved up there, my parents have been to visit them 3 times. My dad doesn't drive and my mum can't drive further than about 40 miles so they travel by train. The last time they visited was about 18 months ago and they planned out their route and as they went to book tickets, discovered there was some engineering works and so they'd need to travel via central London. They phoned my brother at this point to say they couldn't come. My brother was v disappointed and after quite a heated conversation, he did some research and found them a different route that didn't go via London but did mean they'd have to get a bus at the other end for the last hour of the journey. My parents said that still wasn't doable for them. In the end, my brother arranged his work so that he could go and pick them up instead of them getting the bus.
Last year, I was talking to my brother and he said that in future, if they wanted to come and visit, they'd have to sort out their own transport. However he invited us all for new year 2010. DH and I wanted to go with DS and our 2 dogs. In order to my parents as well, we decided we'd have to take 2 cars. (Partly because we needed to take loads of stuff for DS who is 7mo as DB & SIL don't have a lot of baby equipment).
We agreed to do this in October. My mum said to me (thankfully not to my brother!) "Well, maybe this will be the time that we go"!!
From October until we went last week, my mum refused to commit to going as it wouldn't be safe to travel if it was snowy and icy. We live about 5 mins from the motorway ans I tried to reassure that it would be highly unlikely that we wouldn't go. Obviously, we were then hit with a load of snow and ice! Fortunately 90% had melted round here before we went and I tried to reassure her about the weather up in Cumbria.
Then Dad noticed a leak on one of the walls in their house and said that would mean they couldn't go. It ended up being a leaking radiator valve so that got fixed.
Finally, SIL broke her wrist by falling on ice last Monday. We were leaving Wed morning. I decided not to tell my parents about SIL's wrist until we were on our way as I didn't want to give them another reason not to go!
We went, it snowed, there was thick ice and we got back today. All safe and sound!
Seriously though, AIBU to think that it shouldn't be that difficult to get them there?!