Over on Songshine Sounds, Where Were You Tuesday today asks:

What road trip song takes you back to those unforgettable drives?

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In terms of drives we took as a child, the only lengthy trips we took were our annual vacations. In all my childhood years there were only three destinations:

• Yorkshire Dales
• Scottish Borders
• North Wales

Of those three, we went to the Dales and the Borders maybe twice each, and all the other times ended up in the town of Llanrwst.

With no previous association there, my parents went there on their honeymoon, and then a few years later, when I came along, it became the family holiday destination. Every year for about ten years!

I can see a certain attraction in going to the same place every year, getting to know somewhere intimately, but it’s not a path I followed myself. When I became a husband and dad, we never went to the same place twice! We always vowed to, but never did.

The thing about my childhood holidays, we never even had a cassette player in the car in those days. We had an old MW radio. So the notion of having road songs? Forget it!

So, I’m going to fast forward to the days when my daughter was a toddler, when we absolutely had lots of music. In fact we had various CDs purely of children’s TV themes, to keep her amused.

One year, we drove down to the south of France. About a thousand miles, and with a young daughter, I think it took us maybe four days. We had a rule that we would only spend about 4 hours per day driving, as she was so young.

Mostly, she slept. But, when she awoke, she was grouchy. So we put this CD on for her.

At that time, one of the few words in her vocabulary was “again”. So can you imagine how bloody irritating this song became, when played over and over fifty times?