Sea Swims, Sensational Scandinavian Food - And The Odd Disagreement: Interrailing With My 75-year-old Mum

Taking the train from Manchester to Oslo led to 10 action-packed days me and my Zumba-going mum would never forget

My mum had just one stipulation when it came to our mother-and-daughter holiday: she didn’t want to do any of the planning. She would not lift a finger – payback, perhaps, for my tricky teenage years, which saw me ruin one Pyrenean road trip by vomiting on every hairpin. I tried to claim it was food poisoning rather than the result of a night of underage drinking with the campsite bad lads. Mum, who had seen a lot in her career as an NHS psychiatrist in Morecambe, was having none of it.

I suggested taking her Interrailing after she said she was envious of a solo rail trip I’d taken a few years ago. Dad tried to muscle in, but we rebuffed him: three is a bad number for a holiday and I might have regressed to childhood if outnumbered.