Hunkered down in our diminutive cabin on board the overnight ferry from Plymouth to Santander (Mima is sleeping on the floor in a space that only those under 8 could possibly contemplate), there is unanimous jubilation that our unexpectedly prolonged and stressful three weeks in England, spent frantically attempting to bring order to our remarkably chaotic lives, is over.

This is not quite as enjoyable as our last overnight boat trip through New Zealand’s Fiordland, but we are all delighted to be back on the road at the start of the European leg of our world tour.

After a flying tour of industrial northern Spain (Gregor, 9, is singularly unimpressed), we speed in our hastily acquired car through the Pyrenees and into Andorra. Another country notched up, number 12 of our 13-month journey. Stopping in the mountains, the children are astounded to sink deeply into the roadside snow – they have never before been this close to the stuff, skiing holidays having been waived in favour of the heat of Africa.

We cram as many ruined Cathar castles into as few days as possible (Mima, 8, and Kinvy, 5, screech at every forced climb to wonder at a pile of ancient rubble, but this is making up for a year’s missed history lessons) en route to our home for the next two months, Mas de l’aveugle, a rambling farmhouse on the edge of Provence, set among vineyards tended by ageing French farmers. We recognise at once that we should learn something from their slow and contented pace of life.

Gregor, Mima and Kinvy need a bit of schooling during their fourth term away and we have organised a tutor from London to join us for eight weeks of catchup learning. Luck arrives in the form of marvellous Helena, who converts the kitchen of her gîte into a schoolroom and takes them all off for hours of laughter-filled lessons, which they love. Teaching is definitely a skill that we have not acquired, and I am overjoyed to be able to abandon my ghastly maths lessons with Gregor. The tutoring is an astonishingly successful arrangement, formulated weeks earlier in the mountains of New Zealand.

Nick and I, off-duty, spend long lunches mulling our school-homework options. We walk the vineyards, following farmers sitting astride their battered old tractors while they endlessly spray their beloved grapes. We love it here, it is an extraordinarily peaceful, timeless place.

Finally, after all our travelling, we are laid-back to the point of somnolence. I have never known Nick so chilled out. It has taken months of unwinding to get to this point.

Beautiful, safe, culturally loaded (including plenty of grisly bullfighting that Nick loves and I hate), gorgeous old houses – why not live here? No, we like France, but not that much.

Our children need a shot at a normal childhood and for that reason we realise that we have to stop travelling. We have to choose somewhere to live and return to relative convention and normality. Our reasoning feels rational and reasonable, but 15 months after our journey began, we still can’t quite believe that we have reached this point, quite so quickly.

Mas de l’aveugle (01367 820262, www.uzes-holidays.com) sleeps 12 and costs from £1,700 a week in September and £1,200 from October.

Read previous dispatches from the Tims’s round-the-world trip at timesonline.co.uk/timsfamily.

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