You don't get these moments back

On the final drive home, the car stacked full of our belongings and the sun beginning to dip, I noticed a dad I'd clocked as one of the new families on the site. I'd never really paid him any attention before. When you're only there for weekends, in and out visiting places, you don't always catch everyone at the right time for a chat. Him and his wife were sat out on the yellowing grass by their caravan ( travel trailer for those over the pond), dry and pale after a long summer of good holiday weather and barely any rain, with chairs out for the five of them. Their son was in a chair with his rugby ball, and the two girls were just about to head off on another adventure on their bikes. I looked at them and thought, you are so lucky to have all of this ahead of you. I was so envious of all that time, spread out in front of him.

We've decided to sell the caravan. It's been a harder week than I expected, and seeing that family with everything still ahead of them was the moment it properly hit me. I didn't think I'd get this emotional about selling what amounts to a tin can on wheels, but we are where we are.

It's a decision we always knew was waiting for us somewhere down the line. The kids are getting older, and my daughter has exams on the horizon, which means we'll need to be home more to support her through the study sessions the school has put in place. It's something me and Mrs W have talked about for a while, turning it over, wondering when the right moment would be. It turns out the right moment is now.

It's also about recognising something harder. My own kids are reaching for their independence, pulling further and further away from us, which is exactly what they're meant to be doing. Their appetite for heading down to west Wales is fading right along with it. Hard as that is to feel, it's something we have to respect too.

There's a practical side to it as well. If we're going to sell, doing it now makes sense, while there's still a bit of summer season left and we might get a better price. It's the sensible thing to do, and us men do like a logical reason, don't we. The trouble is that none of the logic touches the emotion behind it, which is that this feels like the end of an era. It feels like the end of a part of childhood that we've shared together.

Having the caravan has been one of the few things we've all been able to do as a family, really together. A small space, for a weekend, sometimes weeks at a time, all of us close and comfortable with each other. The mornings when we'd get up and walk down to the beach with the dog, climbing over the rocks, looking in the rock pools for crabs and snails. Wandering up to the old-fashioned sweet shop for toffee bonbons, then ice creams, frisbee in the field, kicking a ball about, fish and chips, bacon sandwiches cooked on the beach. Board games and cards of an evening, Monopoly Deal, Uno, Dobble, or a bit of quiet with everyone sat with their own book. Chatting about stupid stuff, nothing you'd ever call important, and yet the reality is it's that kind of stuff that binds you together. It got us out doing more than we ever seem to manage at home.

That's the bit that's hard to sit with. At home it's too easy. We've got the big telly, the streaming services, all of it, and the reality is we probably don't spend as much time with each other as we should. The house is bigger, everyone has their own space, so everyone kind of retreats into it. The caravan never let us do that. It was the one place that put us all in the same room and made us actually connect.

Talking to the kids about it has been the hardest part. My daughter has been fairly nonplussed by the whole thing. She sees her life stretching out in front of her, she wants a job, she's already halfway out the door in her head. My son is a different story. He rang me yesterday while I was finishing things off and asked me, please, not to sell it. His five-foot-nine frame doesn't match the little boy still inside him, and there was such guilt in hearing him plead to keep it while knowing full well he wants his own independence just as much.

I've spent this week questioning whether it's the right call. Emotionally, it isn't. Emotionally I want to keep it forever. Mentally, I know it is. Both of those things are true at the same time, and I'm having to come to terms with the cognitive dissonance.

When we bought the caravan, my two were six and four. It doesn't feel that long ago, and now look at us. We've had special times in it, wonderful times, happy times. Now that I've been sorting through what comes out of it, the little things keep catching me off guard. There are games in there we bought and barely played, and maybe we'll finally play them now, or maybe they'll end up in the charity shop, and that thought makes me a bit sad. There's a cricket set the kids were keen on once that we somehow never got round to using together. That time has gone now, and we don't get it back.

In the end, the caravan went off to a dealership to be sold. I handed the keys over and drove off, and there was no big moment, none of the finality I'd braced myself for. It all felt strangely anticlimactic, all those years ending as quietly as that.

What's the point of any of this to you, though? The moment you're in right now, reading these words, is one you'll never get back. You will never have more time with your kids than you do today. Make the most of them now, while you can, because it changes, and it changes quicker than you'd ever believe.

What do you want to remember with your kids?

If you can't answer that straight away, don't worry, it's not an easy thing to work out on your own. I've made a free course called The Dad You Want to Be that walks you through exactly that, getting clear on what actually matters to you as a dad. You can start it over at beasuperdad.com/courses/the-dad-you-want-to-be.