Any ideas on how I could achieve this...

[Pennies]

My dad has asked me to join him on a 700 mile bike ride thorugh France in April. He reckons it will take 3 weeks going from Le Harve to his house in Provence.

I'd LOVE to do it but the thing is I have two LO's aged 2.6 and 15 months.

DH can't take that much time of work to be with the children and accompany us but my step mum will be around and will be coming to France at the same time. The plan was for her to go to their place there and wait for him, although she originally wanted to accompany him but he said no because he thinks she won't have the staying power for the journey. She could take the kids for some of the time.

The thing is though... is it too young to leave them for such a long period of time (TBH my gut feeling is that it is too young, but I would be interested if anyone has actually left their LO's for a similar period and how that all worked out). Is there anyway they could be with me on the journey or would that be a) too much for them and b) too much to ask anyone to handle?

I think it's a long time to be away from them, though I think you'd suffer more than they would. If it were me, I'd probably be trying to work out complicated plans whereby they could stay somewhere along the way, so I could spend an evening or two with them in the middle of the cycle, and honestly, I think that would be more hassle for them than it would be worth, not to mention a huge thing to ask of anyone to bring them along.

Is your step mum happy to take them? (I'm wondering if he might feel a little resentful since she originally wanted to do the trip with your Dad). Do they know her reasonably well? Would you be happy with her minding them? If yes to all of the above, then it sounds workable enough to me. Maybe you could get your dad to take a break half way along, and take a train or something to spend a night or two with the kids before going back to resume the trip.

Best of luck - it sounds like a lovely thing to be able to do

gobshite - you're not wrong re. missing them> I went shopping for the afternoon yesterday and couldn't wait to see them when i got back! You're also right about me trying to engineer some way that they could stay two nights ahead so I'd see them every other night I reckon that would be very disruptive for them and also extremely hard work for whoever was with them, which is not fair on anyone is it.

SM is up for some of it - i.e. maybe a week tops. Dh could do another week so that leaves me a week adrift and maybe my IL's could help but I doubt it.

The more I think about it the less of an option the whole thing seems. Such a shame because I wanted it to be a sponsored thing and was thinking of doing 700 Miles for Maude - it being a journey through France and all that.