It's a wanderful life, so it is

Maggie and Beth were off to Australia for 25 days to celebrate Maggie’s big birthday and they were looking for someone to take care of their 2 cats. They live in a gorgeous house in Holmfirth, West Yorkshire. It is a beautiful town with second-hand bookshops, a fabulous old fashioned sweetie shop and is surrounded by sweeping moors, mill towns, numerous tourist attractions and easy access to many cities. Of course we said “yes”. How hard can it be to look after cats, after all?

The answer turned out to be, not very hard at all. Although they hid for the first 2 weeks, only making appearances to be fed, they did eventually come round and by our last night they were up on the sofas with us for cuddles. Of course, every time we tried to capture this on camera, they bolted for the door!

We visited Manchester, Leeds, Wakefield, Harrogate, Huddersfield and Ripon, where we spent a fortune on a warm pork pie. It was worth it though. We had never tasted anything quite like it, and it bore absolutely no resemblance to the supermarket varieties we know and love.

Most of these visits to bigger towns and cities were on expeditions to replace the majority of our wardrobes. After almost 2 years travelling, wearing a limited amount of  clothes, we really needed a new look. We say a new look but Mhairi just insists on replacing like for like, indeed she has 3 of the same blue linen tops, but when you look as chic as she does, why change? 😂 Gerry, on the other hand, is gradually turning into Michael Portillo, thankfully without the same political leanings. In fact it got so bad that Mhairi even caught him in one of said second-hand bookshops with a copy of Bradshaw’s Continental Railway Guide!

Mhairi’s friend Kirsty came up from London for a couple of days. Kirsty turned 60 earlier in the year and plans to visit some of her bucket list places and spend time with as many of her friends as possible throughout the year to celebrate. A very commendable plan. A good time was had by all, although Gerry took the opportunity to visit his former colleagues and friends in Newcastle one of the nights.

There is only so much girly gossip that he can take and, to be fair, there was a lot, but it was so much fun.

Kirsty brought a mystery guide of Holmfirth to solve and the 3 of us spent a brilliant afternoon exploring the town in ways we would never have thought of. It was great fun trying to solve the clues and learning about the history of the town. The most shocking discovery was that there had been a flood in the mid-1800s that killed 81 people. There are markers in the town showing just how high the flood levels reached and it was hard to imagine as we looked down on the stream that now meanders through the town. We enjoyed this so much that, later in the trip, we did a Mystery guide of Manchester and we plan to entertain/bore the kids with ones in Glasgow and Edinburgh. Mhairi and Kirsty enjoyed their day of freedom from Gerry by visiting Yorkshire Sculpture Park and while they may not always have understood the art, they found it very entertaining.

Beth’s mum Helen came for a visit one of the afternoons. We’ll pretend that she didn’t just come to see the cats. 😉 We had a fantastic afternoon catching up and comparing travel adventures over the years. Helen is as geekish as we are when it comes to places to visit and we got a lot of tips from each other.

We had great fun and blethered so much that we forgot to take a civilised photo at the restaurant we lunched at. This was our hurried attempt at a selfie as we were saying goodbye. Until the next time, Helen! 

Maggie and Beth had offered us a couple of sessions with their PT, Jan. We were hoping that Jan could show us a few exercises to help us keep fit when we’re on the road. When we have a gym handy we try to keep our hand in, but Jan gave us lots of tips for fitness routines that can be followed without the need for fancy equipment. This is us “warming up” for the second session. Here’s hoping that we follow through and actually apply ourselves. We’ll see.

However, the most exciting thing that happened while we were in Yorkshire was that we actually managed to get tickets to the Haiti v Scotland World Cup game through the Fifa late sale. Niall is joining us in Miami in June and we had planned to visit Boston for one of the games. We had assumed that we wouldn’t be able to get tickets, but were going for the atmosphere anyway. To say that we are buzzing would be an understatement. Now all we need is for Stevie Clarke and the boys to win the tournament for us. It’s not too much to ask, surely?

We really enjoyed our time in Yorkshire and are thankful to the girls for letting us cat-sit. It gave us a chance to restock our wardrobe and get our plans firmed up for the rest of the year. See our Where’s Next page for more details. 

Next stop is a month touring northern Spain and Portugal. Can’t wait!