The House

And there she was: crumbling, a little dusty, but with a splendid secret around every corner. A grand fireplace, a smooth rounded door handle, numbers tacked onto glass doors from a time unknown. And windows, delightful windows (Yorkshire sliders apparently) that hold in their panes the reflections of a thousand eyes. Well, 300 years of eyes to be precise. Well, what was a girl to do, but fall in love?

But you see; it’s quite a peculiar thing this, writing about a house here in North Yorkshire, for as a writer I often ponder sentences about life in my mind long before I write them down and this sentence, about her; the house. Well that was written in my mind a long time ago, but I had no idea that I would be writing it down here. Here in the North Yorkshire Moors.

Ridiculous really, because it feels so right and we feel so happy and life feels full of adventure and excitement. Maybe we’re naïve. Oh, who knows? Who cares! For now this house, our new home, is going to provide me with a wealth of romantic moments and my how this is a journey I am going to embrace.

So – for those of you wondering: but how can they find their rural dream in England? Well, find a man, a very kind man, who just happens to have a rambling old house in a quaint village on the edge of the Moors and ask him. Yes, don’t be afraid to be cheeky.

“Dear Sir, would you consider renting your house to a pair of slightly unorthodox creative types who dream wistfully of a life in the country?”

And he will read about you, ask questions and share stories until eventually a deal will be struck of work against rent and the family will find themselves scrubbing windows and breathing new life into magical corridors and rooms and their dream of living in a small community in the most stunning of scenery will, for a while anyway, slowly unfold before them.

More soon … I’m exhausted from cleaning and preparing this wonderful building for our arrival. Ahhhh, a home, a real home! Alice smiles a contented smile.

Gulp

For me there is always that *gulp* moment when I find myself motionless, mentally preparing for the next move. At such a momentous juncture in my life where I am about to end 18 months of open-ended travel in favour of a little stability, that gulp moment came last night.

As we cruised through the streets of a Spanish town; the windows open and my arm resting in the cool night air, I watched families eating their tapas, children running around giggling, music and chatter drifting through the darkness and thought: this time next week our life will be utterly different.

Don’t get me wrong, I have experienced this feeling many times over the last 18 months as we have shifted ourselves to new destinations, houses and towns to explore unfamiliar faces and stare wistfully at new scenery. But this time, this time it is different.

Today it feels more final. Not that we will not return, because we will, certainly to Spain, which has many times captured something in our soul that we can’t explain, but because this next move marks the end of a kind of freedom. You see as much as life on the road can be tiring to even the most free of spirits, it also brings with it a feeling of carelessness, of balance within and now we want to retain that in some way, in a life that others may see as restrictive. I think that is our challenge; I think that is why I gulp with nervous anticipation.

And so ...

Where is a girl to start when so much is buzzing around in her head? But alas I felt compelled to at least litter this blank page with a few words. You see, knowing that I have possibly directed you here from my old blog I would hate to think of you looking around; lost and bewildered, wondering why exactly you are here. It’s just that I feel after two years blogging about our travels, to stop entirely would be too much of a shock to my system and that (I hope) maybe some of my readers would be disappointed if I were to disappear off the map altogether, so suddenly … and so Fanciful Alice it is.

This is a place for me to write, without thought really. A place for me to share some of the random things that enter my mind every day, somewhere I can lose myself when writing my book becomes too much or when I feel defeated by editors, but mostly this blog will talk about our new life.

I am hoping it will be one filled with wonderful North Yorkshire countryside, tales of roses and stone walls that drift towards a wild shore or maybe it will be about the quirky characters I hope to meet on our new journey. I’m not sure. But I do hope that you will start this journey with me and maybe together we can work out where it will lead us …

I’m happy to have you here and welcome you with the warmest of smiles!

Welcome!

Please bear with me! My new blog will be up and fully functioning within the next couple of weeks!