Night driving with a 9.5 month old?

[Blueeyes91]

So in January we're looking at going from London to Inverness to visit my family.
We were thinking of stopping in Durham to visit my OHs parents too and break up the journey.

At the moment our plan is:
Sunday 8pm set off to Durham, arrive around 1am, go to bed.
Tuesday 8pm set off the Inverness... arrive at silly o'clock, go to bed.

When we arrive at both places we're going to have to set up a travel cot too :(

Is this a crazy idea? We thought night driving would be better so our LO will sleep as she gets angry when in the car seat too much during the day.

Would it be better to do the journey to Durham earlier in the day and just do night driving to Inverness?

Thoughts/opinions/advice greatly appreciated!!!

Have you ever driven your daughter at night? DS2 hated it. He would sleep for a bit, and then wake, and scream inconsolably til we got off a road with street lamps - so the last 10 miles from the motorway to my parents. The same journey in the light and he was fine.
Made winter trips pretty miserable! That said, now he will travel for 18 hrs by cars and planes pretty happily.

What about setting off slightly earlier the first day - may be a decent stop Birmingham way for tea and a play, then do the next few hours (I'm assuming north London given the timings to Durham?).
Would give you a slightly better day with in in-laws as well.

The weather could be awful as well in terms of driving. I would also think it would take far longer than five hours to reach Durham given the age of your child.

I would rethink this whole idea of driving at night as well and look at alternative transport methods; say flying from London to Edinburgh return then hire a car for the journey to Inverness. There are other perhaps better options open to you here.

Could your parents and his hire a travel cot rather than you two having to set one up upon arrival?.

Personally, I would not plan to drive up the A9 to Inverness at night in January. You will need to keep a very close eye on the weather whenever you do it, but I'm sure if you are from Inverness you realise this. It would be much easier to fly.
I wouldn't fancy arriving somewhere at 2 in the morning and then having to be up for the morning baby routine the next day.