This summer I went on holiday to France for two weeks with my parents and sister Alex.

We were offered a week in a chalet in the French Alps by some friends of friends. This gave us a base once there, but we had to work out how we would cope with the journey without too much stress. Alex and I both get tired on long car journeys, need help with eating and Alex needs to lie down and have extra oxygen during the day. We decided to take a ferry from Portsmouth to Caen , and then take 3 further days to drive south through the French countryside. This meant that we did not have to sit in our van for more than four hours at a time.

Our Brittany Ferry ( Mont St. Michel ) on the way out was really spacious and surprisingly empty for the summer holidays. We were one of the first vehicles on the car deck, which allowed my parents room to get our manual wheelchairs from the back of the van without disturbing all our luggage, and then transfer us from our electric chairs in the van to our other chairs. A helpful porter was there to assist us in carrying our daytime bags up to the main part of the ferry. We had booked a disabled cabin so that Alex and I could lie down for a rest on the voyage. I found the ferry very accessible and was able to go into all the shops, restaurants and outer decks where there were automatic doors. We had a delicious supper before arriving in France .

After docking at 10.30pm, we drove to our first Campanile motel, on the outskirts of Caen . We had two, interlinking bedrooms, one with an extra large bathroom for wheelchair users. This proved an essential space, as there was not much room in the sleeping area itself! We did our first unloading of the van and set up our night ventilators. This meant looking for the plugs and making sure the cables weren't in the way. We got more efficient at doing this with each stop along the journey.

It took until midday to get up, have breakfast and load up the van to set off for Orleans . This part of the drive took us through some really picturesque countryside; it was so beautiful we didn't even realise we had gone wrong at one point! We arrived at the Orleans Campanile to find that our two rooms were not interlinking, but two doors away from each other. This was a difficult night for us as my mother had to sleep on a camp bed on the floor with Alex and me and there was no room to move with all the bags, cables and wheelchairs in the room as well.

The next section of the journey was through more pretty villages, vineyards and then by autoroute to Chalon-sur-Saone where we stayed at the third Campanile. We liked this one the best as our rooms opened onto a garden area whereas the others had been on the car park.
On Thursday morning, we loaded up the van for the final part of our journey. This took us into the mountains and two hours into the drive we had our first view of the mountains. This was extremely exciting and soon after we were going into a tunnel, which emerged on the top of a viaduct! None of us could look down and we had to concentrate on the road ahead. We left the main road and took the very, very windy road up the mountain. The sharp corners lasted about 20 minutes before we reached the village of Les Carroz (1200 metres) where the chalet was.

Our week in the mountains was fantastic for me! Alex found being higher up made it harder for her to breathe, and had to spend a lot of time lying down. This did not stop us all enjoying the breathtaking scenery and beautiful chalets. Our chalet was perfect for us, with two ground floor bedrooms and en-suite bathrooms leading onto an open plan living-dining room and kitchen. Our friends from home also have a flat in the village and they had come out to help us and had made a brilliant ramp which allowed Alex and me to have free access in and out of the patio doors. The village centre was a 10 minute walk from the chalet and had lovely shops and cafes. The highlight of the week for me was the ride in the cable car with my father, which took us to the top of one of the mountains where we had lunch at the restaurant in the clouds on the only grey day of the holiday! The views of the village on the way down were spectacular – unfortunately my camera batteries had run out! On the Monday our friends took us for a picnic at a golf course at 1800 metres where there were more stunning views.

We left Les Carroz after a week of wonderful sunshine and all felt very sad as we drove back down the windy mountain roads. Our route was the same on the way home and we stayed in the same motels and the same rooms. Luckily we had the interlinking rooms in Orleans which made it much easier. On the way back the weather got hotter and hotter – it was 36 degrees on the last leg of the drive. We had to keep cooling ourselves down with baby wipes and water sprays as we don't have air conditioning in the van. Before we took the ferry home on Monday afternoon, we all went shopping at the Carrefour hypermarket. This was amazing – the shop was so huge!

Our return ferry (Normandie) was much older that the Mont St. Michel and was also much more crowded. One of the lifts was not working properly and there were steps onto the outside decks. As the lift wasn't working, we had to have our supper in a corridor on the deck below.

We arrived home at 10.30pm and unpacked our van for the final time. We worked out that we had packed and unpacked our van 16 times over the whole holiday! This may sound completely mad, but we found that the 4 ½ hours driving each day with snacks in the car and overnight stops were much more enjoyable than trying to get to the Alps as fast as possible. We all want to go back to the Alps and feel that the long journey was part of the holiday experience.

Lizzie Baily lizzie@wellspringwestsussex.org.uk