Welcome to My Blog!

A Blog about my life-changing experience of moving to the Scottish Highlands. 

Being my first post, I thought it’d be a good opportunity to explain a bit about myself.

Some might say it’s a midlife crisis and you know, maybe it might be a bit, but it could also be the chance to cease on an opportunity.

I was born and grew up o the board between north and west Yorkshire (I’m a tyke through and through). I can’t really remember being indoors much when I was young. Either climbing trees, on my bike, making imaginary car worlds (with my toy cars) in the garden, having space ship adventures using my hands as spaceships (haha people must have been staring at me). I loved everything outdoors and was obsessed with animals. I remember I got some kind of world animal encyclopedia with photos of lots of animals in it. Each animal had its native habitat, how long it lived what it ate...., I became obsessed, memorizing as much of the book as I could. I think from that point I wanted to be a vet and work with animals. Luckily, I was really good at science as well, so the stars were aligning.

I then went to high school, started playing rugby and just turned into your regular teenager. Studying went out the window a little and friends and rugby were more important. I still did my higher education and was the first in all my family to get into University. However, it was to study ancient history and archaeology, which I liked, but it was just a “hmmmmmm what things do I like......oh yeah I like history, so let’s do that”.

While at university, I was very fortunate to spot one day, a sign for the ERASMUS scheme. If you’re unfamiliar with this, it’s where European universities do exchange programs for their students in and around Europe (supported by the EU). I applied and somehow got accepted to go to La Universidad de Valencia in Spain. A truly life changing moment. I was completely on my own (the only person from Leicester University there at that time) and didn’t speak a word of Spanish when I got there (so needed to pick it up fast, as all the classes were in Spanish). There were some bumps along the way, notably registering for one of my classes and not realizing until three weeks in that the class wasn’t actually in Spanish, haha. But I came out the other end so much the richer.

I came back to Leicester after my year away, finished my degree and then didn’t really know what to do. Again, by chance, I saw an advert to teach English in Japan. I applied, interviewed and got the job. Within a few months I had moved out to Japan and was teaching what can only be described as “Yorkshire English” to Japanese kids......I’m sorry if any of you have had your English corrected subsequently.

If anyone’s been out to Japan, you’ll know they have some crazy mountains and have an unbelievable amount of snow each year. So, while there, I got heavily into snowboarding and started teaching. I got my snowboarding qualifications in New Zealand and taught from that.

Towards the end of the noughties I came back to the UK and again didn’t know what to do with myself, so got an office job in a warehouse back home. I think it was a combination of the job, being stuck in an office, being sat down all day and being back home after I’d been all over the world. It all brought me down and I felt I had to do something or experience something new.

I found a job working in an office in Logistics down in London and moved down the following month.

Now I have to say, I did love living in London, which really surprised me as I’m a northern country bunkin at heart. I progressed through the company quite rapidly from my initial entry level position, I met my partner, Lawrence, we got two pups, a Bullmastiff (Stark, named after Ed Stark in Game of Thrones) and a Victorian Bulldog (Farrah, named after Amy Farrah Fowler in Big Bang Theory). We moved to Canary Wharf (great place to live) after just over a year we decided to move out of the big smoke and into the suburbs just south of London, which is where stayed for about 6 years.

We really wanted to move out of the hustle and bustle of London, the cost is crazy expensive, so as you can imagine, the further you go away from London the cheaper it is to live (and save to buy a house). I kept my job in London but then had to commute each day, unfortunately, this worked out to be about a two and half hour journey each way. Add into that walking the pups in the morning and this meant I was getting up at 5 in the morning and not getting home until 7:30 ish at night at the earliest. It wasn’t really a life.

Lawrence knew I was hating things with work and wanted to be back outside again so he suggested a career change. I was super reluctant if I’m being honest, mainly because I had “the fear”. I had a well paid job, that I was good at and had progressed well in and was scared to leave it, not to mention I didn’t know what I actually wanted to change my career to??

Lawrence suggested I try volunteering to see if I liked something different. So I applied to my local Wildlife trust to volunteer at weekends and helped them out for a year to see if I liked it. I did!

Lawrence helped me find some universities that taught forestry and we tied that in with where we would like to buy a house. We chose the Scottish Highlands and moved up at the end of 2017. The house was built in 1902, needs renovating extensively and there are about eight and half acres around it. No one has lived here for five years so lots to do all round (garden, forest, Rhododendrons, renovations). I started my studies in mid 2018, have just finished my first year and I’m about to start my year placement at the Highlands Wildlife park.

Writing this, I get to see my life has kind of gone full circle and I have managed to get back to what I first loved while incorporating my new passions (I am obsessed with plants, namely trees).

If you’ve managed to get to the end of my waffle, then you deserve a medal, but that was my life to this point in a nutshell.

Me and the dogs having a walk in the Rhodies in the garden.