I’m sorry! I feel the need to apologise as it appears I’ve had to revise my views :)

To set the scene, I will take you back around 5 years to my horsey days. Many an hour was spent drinking manky tea in dusty tack rooms sheltering from the rain and one of our most frequent topics of conversation was the school run mum.

You see back then (pre children) a 4×4 (or SUV) was a practical tool, they were to be used for towing horse trailers, driving out to the fields and carting bales of straw around. A 4×4 was supposed to be full of horse hair and straw, it was supposed to be covered in mud both inside and out. A 4×4 without a tow bar was like a horse with no saddle -pointless!

Oh how we mocked the school run mums in their shiny 4x4s that they couldn’t drive properly, that had never been off road in their lives and that probably didn’t even know how to turn it into 4×4 mode.

5 years on, my horsey days are no more (for now) but I’ve found myself buying a nice shiny 4×4 and I’ve become one of the mums I used to mock. You see I have 2 children under 2, when we go anywhere in the car it is a military operation. An overnight stay involves 2 travel cots, a portable highchair, a double pushchair, nappies and supplies for 2 and of course all the other 1001 supplies needed and that is before we actually manage to squeeze in some clothes and toiletries for me and the husband. I soon discovered that with our old small car, trips away were a thing of the past and we needed something bigger if we were ever going to leave the house again.

The decision to go for a 4×4 was also made following two bad winters in our village, our road is like an icerink and we’ve been snow bound a few times. I remember glancing out of the window enviously at the 4x4s going past the house as my little car was buried under 2ft of snow and going nowhere fast.

So ladies of the school run, I’ve joined you! I’m one of the 4×4 brigade! I don’t have a horse or a trailer to tow (but I do have a tow bar) and my car is full of biscuit crumbs, baby wipes and toys rather than mud and horse hair. I have only been off road once (albeit driving across a field at a car boot sale) and it will probably never snow again now but the deed is done!

One small point though – I can park mine like a pro, can you? ;)