Move it on over

Christmas is long over, but for us there has still been lots of packing, wrapping and wrestling with sticky tape. We are on the move.

I haven’t posted a blog here for more than four months. I haven’t run out of ideas – there are still plenty. And I haven’t returned to pointless, incessant barking.

No – we have been busy househunting (that was the easy part) and then managing the paperwork and uncertainty that goes with selling and buying property. It all takes time going into excruciatingly fine detail about, for example, whether we leave the washing line or not.

So it’s official – Robin and I are leaving Cumbria and moving to the Far East. I exaggerate – Lowestoft will still be an hour away. We’re settling near Bury St Edmunds, “the jewel in Suffolk’s crown”. We’ll swap Herdwick sheep for Suffolks, red squirrels for red kites. 

Why?

Our granddaughter is nearly four-and-a-half. We’ve had very little time together so far, and we don’t want to miss any more. To visit her is a five-hour drive each way in good road conditions. We long for the spontaneity that comes with being less than 15 minutes away. We’ll use less petrol.

My Parkinson’s aside, we’re both in good health and want to make this move when we still have the energy to declutter and sort our stuff.  If either of us does need hospital admission, we don’t want our daughter to drop everything and drive anxiously to the Cumberland Infirmary (289 miles) when we could be in the hospital where she works.

How can you bear to leave the Lake District?

We moved out of London and into Cumbria in our early 40s because we wanted to do so while we were still young enough to enjoy it. Many years earlier, friends of my parents retired in their 60s to Rydal near Ambleside. They had a lovely split-level house, and they were expecting to walk the dog up Loughrigg every morning. Within a year one of them had a stroke and couldn’t manage the stairs, let alone Loughrigg. Their children and their families were still down in Hampshire.

I can still walk and scramble upwards, but descents are much trickier. Each step is a brain-mangling risk assessment. In the time it takes me to come down from Stickle Tarn to the Old Dungeon Ghyll my patient companions could secure a table, a pint and a pie before darkness descends and the kitchen closes. “It’s OK, take your time,” they say. But it isn’t OK for me.

The right decision

My friends Mike and Sue retired to Watermillock, close to Ullswater (in my opinion the most beautiful of the Lake District lakes) in 2005. At the time it was to be their forever home. But in 2016 they announced they were moving to Solihull in the West Midlands to be nearer their three grandchildren. They were leaving a beautiful house in a stunning location. I didn’t get it. I thought they were crazy.

Now I get it. Blood is thicker than geography. Mike and Sue have no regrets. “We’re very happy being near family,” says Mike, “and it is warmer here!” Naturally they miss the many friends they made, the scenery and the walking, “but we made the right decision.”

We’ll miss you

Robin and I will miss the scenery, too. We can see the mighty Blencathra  (2847ft) from our shower, confident in the knowledge that, even with the most powerful binoculars, walkers on Blencathra cannot see us in the shower. The different seasonal coats on the fells, the raging torrents and calm millponds of the becks and lakes. We’ll still have plenty of wetland to explore and Robin plans to continue his voluntary work with the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB). We’ll miss Cranston’s Cumberland sausage and Ullswater pie, but Suffolk tempts with many culinary delights.

And of course, we will miss our local friends. You know who you are and how you’ve made a difference to our lives. Thank you. We look forward to building a new social life and support network. But we won’t forget you.

Play> Move it on over > Hank Williams and Drifting Cowboys

Credits:

Suffolk sheep Tim Parkinson  creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/

Talking Labradors Alex Gregory