We recently went to visit my brother and his family who, a few years ago, returned to my sister in laws homeland, the very beautiful island of Sardinia which floats in the middle of the Mediterranean sea just below Corsica. 
We try to avoid flying for a whole host of reasons and so each year when we undertake this journey, it is either by train or road, and then boat. I’ve mostly travelled solo with my children who this year were 6 and 10 and I often get asked, what do they do? Do they have iPads or phones etc? Don’t they get bored?
Over the years I realise its perhaps to do with a little bit of travel prep but probably more just a faith in my kids to find brilliance in boredom and their expectation. If I tell my 6 year old son we're off to our local town 30 minutes away, he can often respond with, thats too far etc etc but l tell him we're driving the best part of 20 hours in total to Sardinia and he can't get in the campervan / on the train soon enough.
They definitely have odd moments of being a bit fed up at times but I think over the years they have grown to love the different kinds of unexpected magic that long distance slow travel can unravel. Remie has been doing long distance journeys since we took her across America on the train from Seattle to San Francisco to New York when she was a baby and I regularly travelled by train from London to Geneva with her as she grew. My memories of those journeys are so special and the little Windsor & Newton watercolour sets we took for painting in our notebooks along the way will always have a place in my heart because of these journeys.
In the van or on the train we of course pack some activities and favourite toys into one of our Forivor suitcases which is the perfect travel suitcase for kids. The main thing is notebooks, mini water colour sets, crayons or pens, a couple of favourite storybooks, lego men and one or two toy cars for Taryn (6) and Remie (10) packs all kinds of miniature things into a miniature suitcase which is her world of joy at the moment.
They have Yoto players but we honestly haven’t used them much yet - l keep thinking they’ll come into their own but we tend to listen to music all together and this year we enjoyed Rick Mayall’s Grimm Fairytales which me and my brothers loved as kids. I might be biaised but the one item I would never travel without is Forivor's large muslin blankets - by train or plane or road. They are the hardest working item in our travel bag providing a home away from home in the way that only your favourite textiles can: a shade from the hot sun, a towel, a bedtime blanket and entertainment with their intricate illustrations as well as most definitely making you go faster when you're playing superman on the boat.
The highlight of our journey every year has become boarding the ferry - on the way to Sardinia it is full of excitement for the holiday ahead. The harbour lights shimmering in the late night mediterranean heat which we have felt get hotter and hotter as we’ve descended through France, shedding layers with every few hours of travel, until eventually around Lyon, our jeans are firmly packed at the bottom of our bags to stay there for the remainder of our trip.
We soak up the balmy night and the excitement of setting sail from the highest open deck we can find and then when we’ve filled up on the view (and probably a few ship fumes), we head to our cabins and lay out our Forivor muslins and story books and head out to explore the ship. We've learnt that it doesn't cost a whole lot more to eat in the fancy restaurant on board so the last couple of times we have dined out with waiters in dicky bows and fancy table cloths as we sail through the calm evening sea. We take our tired heads off to bed and fall asleep with the light of the boat picking up the sea foam outside the window. I love luxuriating in the sleepiness of being rocked by the boat but usually the desire to catch the gentlest pink light of dawn rising up above the islands wins out. 
This year we were in Sardinia in May for my nephew’s first communion and it was so good to experience the spring flowers and explore some places that feel inaccessible in the midsummer heat. We bathed in the thermal waters of the Coghinas river near Castelsardo, swam and scrambled through beautiful descending rock pools of Bau Mela, hiked through the fragrant maquis to reach the crystal waters of the eastern part of the island at Cala Gonone, drove breathtaking (and slightly hair raising) roads, and with the weather cooler we also treated ourselves to a sail trip to Asinara islands which were formely a prison colony but now a Marine Reserve and home to white donkeys and a turtle sanctuary.
Stocked up on olive oil from my sister-in-laws cousin (everyone is her cousin) we reluctantly say goodbye to our family. But as is the beauty of the slow way of travel, we are consoled by the delights awaiting us on the journey ahead. We set sail from Porto Torres and wake up with Genoa appearing pink against its blue hills on the horizon. A few hours later back on the European mainland, we arrived in Turin for a wander, a food market and my favourite activity, a flea market browse where I found a now favourite pair of dungarees. Hot and sticky we headed for the lakes for a quick dip and then a night in the forests above Lago Maggiore where we went to sleep with fireflies around our van and woke up in an intense storm. 
The storm lifted and left blue mountainous silhouettes with perfectly accentuated white clouds making our journey across the water to the exceptionally extravagant and mind blowing Isola Bella even more beautiful. Our eyes all full up on the beauty of the lakes we drove up into the Simplon pass in the Alps where the children couldn't believe that they had come from the sunny crystal waters of the med and were now playing in snow. We cooked dinner below a beautiful eagle monument and then started to make our descent stopping into a picture perfect swiss timber chalet style bar which in the evening light also looked like it was straight from Twin Peaks. A quick pre bedtime hot chocolate and then teeth brushed and into pyjamas before setting off on a nighttime drive. Leaving us with a final short drive through France where we stopped off in Champagne for a quick and delicious Champagne tasting and an obligatory boulangerie lunch before heading to Calais where it fittingly started to drizzle before heading back to the UK and Wales.
