Day One: Houston, TX to Little Rock, AR. 439 miles.

The day slid by rather easily all in all. Yes, Laura may or may not have a broken neck. Yes, William was sick over himself and the car in the MIDDLE OF NOWHERE. Yes, trying to drive out of Texas is a little like attempting to take your land armies into Russia. But, really, it was all pretty easy and here we are in a WHOLE NEW STATE, tucked up in a motel room in Little Rock, Arkansas.

The driving – and there was a lot of it by all accounts - just sort of happened. The flying grey ribbons of freeway that tie knots about central Houston gave way to an interminable blackened band of road that undulated all the way to the horizon. The blazing green live oaks of the metroplex were replaced by the bluegreen pines of East Texas as we followed state highway 59 north.

To begin with the rolling landscape of trees and grass seemed very ordinary, very English, under a pearly blue-white sky. But by the very late afternoon, those pine forests had become huge towering walls along the road-side, intimidatingly dense in places and gently rocking in a hot summer wind. Occasionally a creek or river of brown water would cut through the trees, and sometimes we could spot great channels, cleared from the forest alongside the road to make way for – and mask – a mighty chain of telegraph poles that seemed to be marching down their own silent avenues of deep red earth.

Sadly, the nature of a road trip is to drive and when there is 400 miles to go before bed, one cannot always afford to stop and explore. So we sped past the hand-painted sign promising ‘BIG ASS MELONS’, we didn’t stop at ‘Wayne’s Gun Clinic’ and we missed the photo opportunity of the road sign pointing to a town called Uncertain. In fact I was forced to admit that it is very difficult to take pictures of anything other than the road itself, and posting photos, tweeting and the like is dependent on a) Laura driving and b) having any kind of 3G service.

So we ploughed on, chewing up the miles. When William was sick (only a little and he was fine immediately) we stopped for lunch, in Diboll, TX. When we needed petrol (I think this may be a daily occurrence), we held on until Marshall, TX. These towns seem to cling to the road for life – a sun-lashed frontage of diners, gas stations and motels. You stop, get out and the heat of the day collapses impossibly down upon you once again. At dinner time, we tried our luck in Arkadelphia, AR only to find ourselves in ‘downtown’, a deserted grid of streets, the stores seemingly zombiefied in the twilight. Then, with a bit of luck, we found a great restaurant by the roadside and ate chicken and rice and drank raspberry lemonade. Then one more drive, the road carving through the black hills and trees and here we are: somewhere in the environs of Little Rock (just up the road from Social Hill believe it or not), the State Capital of Arkansas. Tomorrow holds the promise of lots more driving, as well as Memphis and Nashville, Tennessee. But we may have time in the morning to take a peek at the State Capitol and maybe the Bill Clinton Presidential Library. Remember him?