Three weeks, three trains, one toddler and a great many custard tarts

Every few months somebody at a party learns that we travel with Pip, who is two and a half, and asks the question people ask. It is never why. It is always how, said in the voice you would use for someone who has mentioned they keep a wolf.

The honest answer is: slowly. We used to do Lisbon in a long weekend. Now we do Lisbon in six nights, and on four of them we are asleep by half past eight, because a person who is 89 centimetres tall has decided that we are.

01 The plan

Fly into Lisbon, then go north by anything that isn't a plane: the fast train to Porto, the slow train up the Douro, a hire car across the border into Galicia, and a ferry to an island you need a permit to land on. Then a bus and a train back to Porto, and home to Bristol before anyone notices we've gone.

02 What we expect, and what we have learned to expect

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We are not trying to prove anything. We just noticed that the trips we loved before Pip were never the ones where we saw the most. They were the ones where we sat still long enough for a place to happen to us. A toddler, it turns out, is an excellent way of making you sit still.

Travelling with a small child is like travelling with a very short, very honest guidebook. It skips the cathedral and gives the pigeons five stars.

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