“This will go down as the year of the roof box,” declared Tom Peck in The Times today (paywall). He added that travelling to the in-laws with small children makes a top box essential.

I recognised the sentiment. When Owen was born, one of our first purchases was a roof box for journeys to my parents in Wales and holidays in Dorset and Cornwall. At the time I thought it odd that my Mum and Dad could go on holiday with two children in far smaller cars, such as Dad’s 1960s Austin 1100 seen above, without the need for a roof rack. But life was simpler in those days. Cars didn’t have seat belts, never mind Isofix child seats. And people had far less stuff.

As the photo above shows, even an estate car wasn’t big enough for a holiday with a two year old. What on earth did we take with us?

The top box has languished in the garden for most of the last five years; you can travel lighter with a teenager than a toddler. But on our first pandemic holiday, in Tenby in August 2020, we planned to use it so we could take all our beach stuff, windbreaks and so on. But disaster struck: we’d forgotten where we’d stored the Thule kit that attached the box to the car. As a result, we went away without it. It was only on our return that we remembered it was inside the box!

No wonder I have a reputation for taking everything except the kitchen sink when I go on holiday…