Driving vs flying with an 8 month old

[lobsters]

We are thinking of going to the south of France with DD who will be 8 months old. She's our first child, and I'm clueless about travelling with children. I'm guessing it's a lot easier to drive so you can take everything with you, but we would take motorail, which i've read poor reviews of and is very expensive. It would be cheaper to fly and hire a car.

Any advice on the pros and cons of doing a long train journey and having the car, or flying and hiring car for half the price? Is it worth the extra to have the car with us? IF it helps the plan is to have my parents with us as well.

Provided you don't have to take a travel cot then flying is easier especially if your parents are going, I have found flying with my DC's before they can crawl/walk is infintely easier than when they can. Most airlines will allow you to take a pram to the boarding gate and you can get milk etc once through security.

personally I would rather drive, because I hate flying. But otoh, with only one baby, it's not too bad. dd was always quiet on flights (ds wasn't though!

could you not just drive rather than motorail? and have you factored in parking?

anyway imo having the car is worth paying a bit extra, but not double. But driving with a full car is much greener than flying, so probably worth double all in all. It's nice to feel smug on holiday...

We've done both the drive and motorail. I would say they all even out at the end of the day.

I don't think the small baby is a big consideration, tbh. It's really a question of time vs cost and convenience.

I would go for flying if that would be your preference if it wasn't for the uncertainty of not having done it before. We've taken DD on a couple of longhaul flights as have inlaws in the States - the flights have always gone a lot easier than I expected. She loves the airport and the novelty of being on the plane. She tends to get more bored and frustrated in the car and I find it more difficult to entertain her there and sometimes the only thing for it is to stop and end up adding time to the journey. At least with the plane you can walk them up and down, they're not contrained in a carseat the whole time and you have plenty of people you can pass her around if you have your parents as well. It should be a short flight as well.

Having said that we will be driving and ferry to Northern Ireland this year as the flights are very pricy.

hey lobsters congrats on birth of ur daughter hun, we chatted on reading thread.

id opt for flying, such a short flight aswell and id say alot easier xxxx