We hadn’t been on a holiday since our first child was a baby. An impromptu weekend trip to the mountains, three hours away from where we lived in Calgary, Canada, with our three-month-old baby was the last real holiday our family had gone on since we started having children.
Nine years later, we were standing on Scottish ground at Edinburgh Airport. Sweaty, stinky, hungry, and tired, our family of four started our first vacation in nearly a decade driving through the Scottish countryside on our way to Alnwick, Northumberland.
The summer sun was setting as we drove to our first Airbnb. The fields of sheep and quaint cottages were caught up in the evening glow of the sunset. I had spent the last two months planning it all, and I was relieved to finally be where I’d fantasised about. The landscape was stunning. I was so happy. Stopping at Morrison’s for groceries, it felt surreal being in a new supermarket when only eleven hours before, we’d boarded our flight from Calgary. The shopping, we put on the credit card. The rest of the trip, we did just the same.
Shorts
One year earlier, my husband – who is from Lancashire – and I had been watching an episode of Clarkson’s Farm. Seventies-era rock’n’roll played over images of Jeremy driving his tractor over golden fields, birds swooping in and out of the frame. Hedgerows and stone walls, wildflowers and wildlife, the bucolic scenes of the British countryside mesmerised me. The beautiful countryside of England looked so beautiful compared to the dried-up, wildfire smoke-filled Canada outside my window. I longed to be where he was.
