I once read somewhere that land, at least until it is highly civilised and urbanised, gets the kind of people who are suited to it. I think Britain could claim to be pretty intensively cultivated, and, hopefully, civilised, but I wonder if the general idea still rings true? Do we suit the land that we live in? I was wakeful last night and annoying my husband by asking him questions when he was trying to get to sleep. I was wondering where he would choose to live within the UK, if money was absolutely no object (cue hollow laughter), work didn’t matter, you didn’t have to worry about uprooting children, etc. He muttered something darkly about life on Orkney, all alone, looking good to him at that particular moment, but we’ll let him have his little joke. It’s harder than you think when you start considering all the places that are special to you – at least it is for me, but then I am known for being maddeningly indecisive. Maybe the rest of you are all lucky enough to be living right where your dreams first led you, or else you’re firmly rooted where you’ve always been and couldn’t leave.

My favourite part of Britain is Northumberland. There is a huge family bias, of course; it was my childhood home until I was uprooted to the south of England at
the age of seven, and for me it has the pull of early memories, family summer holidays and Christmas get-togethers, and, now, as a place where I take my own children each year. I won’t wax lyrical about the beauty of the place; there are several other people blogging here who live there, know it intimately and can describe it far better. But whenever I used to think about relocating to the country, I’d always imagine myself there, among those ‘blue-remembered hills’ (and I know that was written about Shropshire, but it always makes me think of Northumberland). Unfortunately, we couldn’t do it because of work commitments, and maybe it was just as well; I don’t think it could ever have lived up to my expectations. It’s maybe better that it remains the place I escape to, both literally for holidays and figuratively in my head. My Grandparents are still alive there in my memory, along with the wallflowers and lupins and hollyhocks in their tiny garden, the pee-wits calling overhead, the notes of their clock still echoing. My Grandad was a miner, and spent a large proportion of his life deep underground in the pitch black. Yet in that ordinary colliery village where I spent most of my childhood summers, what I remember most of all is the clean sweeping air and the way my Grandad was first and foremost a countryman and gardener.

Maybe it’s better that I’m not continually assailed by little drifts from the past blown in on that air. My other Grandmother is still going strong at 94, still living independently just outside Newcastle, and writing this reminds me that I need to go and see her, and soon. The days really are slipping away.

Probably because of my early memories, I’m a sucker for dramatic northern landscapes. I love the Lakes and North Yorkshire. Further south, I have developed a deep love for Dorset, particularly that part of the coast between Lyme and Bridport, because of the times that my husband and I spent there – it’s become ‘ours’. Cornwall I love, well, just because it’s Cornwall. The Chilterns, particularly the bit around the Bucks/Oxfordshire border, is mellow and beautiful, and I know it well. I don’t know Devon all that well, really, although we’ve had a couple of spectacular holidays with the children on the North Devon coast, and I have friends who have relocated there. My husband loves Dartmoor, yet I haven’t been there much. This is a small country, yet huge tracts of it I’ve never been to. I’ve spent time living in France and Italy, and know some of their regions better than parts of Britain. I don’t know Shropshire, Herefordshire or the Welsh borders at all. I’ve never been to Wales (I know, I know). My husband loves Snowdonia; I love the sound of it, but it exists only in my imagination. I went to the far north Scotland for the first time last year and fell in love. East Anglia, in truth, was never one of my ‘special’ places. I barely knew it before we moved here. The dream of the lifestyle was seducing me, I admired the places we saw, agreed with all the practical reasons for being here, wanted the house. But I didn’t fall in love. In fact, in those first months, I fear I behaved like a sulky teenager. Nothing to do. Rains all the time. Don’t know anyone. S’boring. I longed for drama, for moors or cliffs or mountains. I got oceans of grain and sleepy, half-timbered villages and churches on the skyline. It isn’t really me, I thought, snarkily. I won’t deny that I still love dramatic landscapes. But I’ve learned that drama can be found in the history of places, in the echoes of the past that can be heard all over this county, in lonely villages which might disappear, quite soon, beneath the waves. It’s just beneath the surface, in those slumbering, but staggeringly beautiful and once rich wool towns. The drama is in the local lives that are being played out every day amongst an unchanging and very English landscape. I’ve put down roots, they’ve been fed and watered, and a scar would be left if they were ever pulled up.