stuck on verb tenses and parallelism

[mas94010]

1.What is wrong with this sentence?
"Fortunately, my grandparents, who had accompanied us by car to our starting point, were there to take some of our things along and so to lighten our bags."
2. Is it correct to say:
Fortunately, my grandparents, who had accompanied us by car to our starting point, were there to take some of our things along and so lightened our bags."
Is this just a style issue, on which tense to use?

[Francois]

I'm no teacher, so I'm just giving my opinion.
"and so to lighten our bags" doesn't sound ok in this context. I would use another clause (", which lightened our bags"), or another sentence since this one is already pretty long.

FRC

[MikeNewYork]

1.What is wrong with this sentence?
"Fortunately, my grandparents, who had accompanied us by car to our starting point, were there to take some of our things along and so to lighten our bags."
2. Is it correct to say:
Fortunately, my grandparents, who had accompanied us by car to our starting point, were there to take some of our things along and so lightened our bags."
Is this just a style issue, on which tense to use?

I agree with Francois. "Lightened our bags" is not really accurate. The bags weighed the same. "Lightened our load" would be better. Each person carried less weight.