“Time is free, but it’s priceless. You can’t own it, but you can use it.
You can’t keep it, but you can spend it. Once you’ve lost it you can never get it back.”
— Harvey Mackay
It is has been nearly five years since I have last written a post on this website. It wasn’t something I had planned to have left for so long, it has just been that life events have always gotten in the way, and I also would always say to myself, that I will do one tomorrow but as we all know, tomorrow never comes! So after a life changing event in August of this year (I will bore you more on that later), I have decided to put pen to paper, or more like fingers to the keyboard.
So after five years, what do you write about? I very nearly went for a post with just lots of pictures and whack the odd quote in here and there. But I’ve chosen a more written pos (with the odd photo) of where we have been and the journey we have been on. Because the one thing we have been so lucky in, is having lived in some of the most beautiful parts of the United Kingdom.
Back the the pandemic.
Prior to March 2020, I had spent much of the time shouting at the news for the powers that be, to ‘shut the fucking country down’! Even though I was a self employed gardener at the time, and I knew this would have a serious impact on my income, seeing what was happening on the continent and having no faith of the idiots in charge, I knew this was the only way. On the 23rd March I was relieved when it did finally happen, but also remembering my phone pinging within less than twenty minutes of the announcement, with the first of many cancellations. Admittedly as time went on and with certain guidelines in place, I could continue with some of work but not all, and this I never fully recovered from.
With an uncertain future with the pandemic, my health giving me a kick, being self employed and to top it off, being screwed over by the incompetence of the Inland Revenue, I decided that being a self employed gardener, was no longer an option. As the world yo-yoed between opening up, and then shutting down again, I started to look for more permanent employment, looking at positions not just in the Cambridgeshire area.
It wasn’t until later in 2021, that I started really upping my search for a new job and by then, I had settled on the idea of moving away from the Cambridgeshire area. In those times moving house was not always something that could be done easily with the pandemic, so things were often put on the back burner. It was also a time when I got used to having zoom interviews, something that felt very strange at the time.
During this time not everything was bad. In January 2021, I became a grandad for the first time at the age of 50, although at the time we didn’t get to see my grandson for the first few months of his life because of the lockdowns and my daughter was living in Manchester. After losing our Jack Russell Terrier X at 17 1/2 years in the autumn 2020, we did adopt another dog in the summer of 2021. When I say dog, I do mean another Jack Russell Terrier and if you have ever owned or do own a JRT, you will know what I mean by this. She is eleven now, and still making us smile. Then finally, in the autumn of 2021, I found a wonderful job in a beautiful part of the country. So after 19 years in the same house in Cambridgeshire … we started packing!
The not so wild west.
The Cotswolds, the largest area of AONB (Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty) but until 2021, it was an area I had heard a lot about but never visited. Which I do now regret considering it is only roughly a couple hours away from Cambridge. I shall in this post, write only a brief piece on the areas we stayed, as I will write more about our time spent here in in future posts.
Bruern, a picturesque area just five miles west of Chipping Norton and only a short distance from Bourton on the Water and for those who watch it, Clarcksons farm, was just a stones throw away. The locals opinion Jeremy Clarkson still amuses me, they either loved him, or hated him, never an in between. It was often quite good fun winding that one up as well.
I fell in love with the area when I went for the interview for a gardeners job in September 2021 on a beautiful sunny day, and I was immediately totally awe struck by it’s beauty. It was the very end October when I moved up there and the weather on that day was very wet and windy, but the Cotswolds still looked as beautiful as on a sunny day.
We were there for only six months but whilst there, my dream job came about again and lure of this was just too much. Six months was never long enough for the Cotswolds and there is regret that our time was short, but I did come away meeting a good friend with whom I am still in contact with. Come May 2022, we were back on our travels.
Heaven … is … a place on earth.
They say Heaven is on earth and in June 2020, I visited it for the very first time. The Scottish Highlands is just that, and to have lived there and met some truly wonderful people, it has left a massive mark on me.
Dodging the lockdowns, I headed up for a few days for my first non Zoom interview for many years for a Head Gardeners position. This was before I had ever heard of Bruern and was the reason I moved from the Cotswolds after only a short period of time. Although it wasn’t until May 2022 that I finally moved up there to live and work.
Ardtornish Estate is located on the northwest of Scotland, and is a truly stunning and extremely magical place to live and work in. With the Isle of Mull sometimes in its sights (depending on the weather), Ben Nevis not too far away, Oban either a two-ferry-journey away or a sixty mile car journey and with picturesque walks on its doorsteps taking in Lochs, mountains, waterfalls, streams and forests … what more could you ask for. Oh, and there is the weather, I absolutely loved it … including the rain! And when it rains in the Highlands, it fucking rains! Never seen anything like it but, I found it both calming and refreshing whether working in it or watching and listening to it from inside. Also, having lived and worked in and around the Fens for most of my life, I did really feel that I was living in the Himalaya’s. Let’s face it, people that live in Cambridgeshire get dizzy going over a speed bump, so it took a little while for my legs to adjust and be a little less confused, especially when in the fens you can walk miles on the flat but here you could ascend several feet in seconds.
So with the scenery, the wildlife, the people and the course the weather, we really felt at home. It didn’t matter if it was at work, walking the surrounding areas, shopping in Fort William (we had to catch a ferry to do our weekly shop), chilly at home, most days you’d pinch yourself to remind you that it was real.
As I have already mentioned, I will revisit in the Highlands in a more detailed post in the coming weeks. Here’s a few photo’s until then.
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Whilst myself, my wife and my youngest daughter were living in the Highlands, my eldest son and eldest daughter along with my grandson continued living down south in the Cambridge area. With health problems and personal issues affecting both of them, I often had to do the 950 mile round trip visiting them. One way took just a little over nine hours, not including the fast food stops and apart from the A1, you went through some spectacular areas. I used to love doing the journey especially when coming back.
Glasgow could sometimes be a little challenging with the traffic but I often enjoyed the drive through, it was when you hit the Loch Lommond area when the scenery really starts to become a spectacular sight. The next 100 (ish) miles sends you through some stunningly jaw dropping areas.
Unfortunately, after a lot of soul searching, we made the extremely difficult decision to head back to Cambridgeshire, as family always comes first. Although we left for family reasons, moving from the Highlands has hit us all hard. Not just the area, but we also got to know some truly wonderful people. Leaving that part of the world has ripped the fuck into me! In late August 2023, we headed away from the Highlands returning back south.
Back in the south
It was great being close to family again, but the coming months/year were especially hard for us all. It also didn’t help that I went from my dream job to the worst job ever! This one, I will skip past very quickly.
In September 2024 we moved to a wonderful little village in Suffolk and in January 2025, I started another Head Gardeners job, this time in Essex. The Arthur Findlay College is an absolutely wonderful place to work. Not far from Stansted airport itself, but surrounded by some wonderful countryside. It’s just under an hour travel to get to work but after travelling all those hundreds of miles back and forth from Scotland, the miles are certainly not an issue. It’s a wonderful garden to work in and with great people and a massive relief from my previous job! Slightly different to what I am used to, but being in a college environment, it is one I am also familiar with.
Although in August, whilst having a few days out with my family, life decided it was going to give us another little kick. Whilst out walking in a popular woods just outside of Cambridge, I started to feel a little iffy. Putting it down to the heat, we decided to turn back but by then it was too late. The last thing I remember is saying something to my daughter, starting to crouch down, and then it was lights out! The next thing was coming round and seeing that two paramedics and a park warden had joined my family. Even though we were deep into the woods, they had managed to get an ambulance close enough for me to get to and then to drive me out of the woods and on to Addenbrookes Hospital in Cambridge. I had gone over before many years ago, but nothing like this, and after several tests in the hospital, I was told that I may have had a possible seizure and not to drive, operate machinery, etc. It was several weeks later when I had my neurologist appointment that I learned what I had in August, was an Epileptic seizure. Not what I had wanted to hear as I knew what this would mean and how it would potentially change things.
So what does the future hold now that I am on anti seizure medication? To eventually get back to the job I love for starters. To stay seizure free and to be able to finally drive again, because as well as my work … I love driving! Not just for the convenience but for the places it can take you to. Public transport is ok but is also, highly unreliable, very expensive and doesn’t often take you to the places you need to go! Although whatever the future does holds, the journey may be on pause … but for me, the journey has not ended.
“The true voyage of discovery is not a journey to a new place; it is learning to see with new eyes”
~ Marcel Proust
