At every year’s end we are all encouraged to analyse the year gone by and then make resolutions to do things even better in the coming year. Well I think Celine and I would be hard pressed to have a better year in 2019, but I am quite sure we can have just as much fun!!
2018 was decidedly busy for us with a couple of long trips, one ‘down under’ and the other back ‘across the pond’. There’s no yellow brick road guiding travellers to the Oz we visited, but it is a country with a lot of magic, and being predominantly populated by migrants from the ‘old country’, it is an easy place for Anglo-Saxons – and their English-speaking wives – to find their way and feel at home. Crossing the Atlantic however, is a very different kind of journey and however many times we have both done it, we never cease to be surprised by what we find in dear old continental Europe.
We both enjoy travelling, as much for the adventure of discovering new places as for the enjoyment of returning to old pastures. Or so we thought when we planned our trip to Italy this autumn. “Let’s have a look at those regions of the country we haven’t seen before, for surely they will be every bit as good as the Italy we already know!” Lesson number one: Do not assume, and don’t take the recommendations of others at face value. Lesson number two: There may well be good reasons why one part of a country is so much more popular than another.
Lesson number three is a harder one to swallow. Just because you have enjoyed a country several times before as a tourist, does not automatically justify the corollary “hence it must be a really great place to live”. [If you haven’t already read my previous post “SFTF Italia o Portogallo Pt.5 Decisions, decisions . . .or rather a lack of same!” you may be wondering what leads me to this conclusion.] My migration to Long Beach CA to start a new life with Celine has some relevance to this lesson. My few short visits for various family gatherings prior to taking that step totally failed to educate me about the Californian lifestyle. I followed my heart in making the decision, and have absolutely no regrets in that regard. However, my previous habitats of semi-rural England, lakeside dwelling in Canada, plus a couple of short sojourns in hot dusty Kuwait and tropical Nigeria, in no way prepared me for a life in the seemingly endless megalopolis that surrounds Los Angeles. So I have to admit our recent peregrinations have been prompted by my wish to return to a lifestyle more suited to my ‘needs’ and, happily, Celine has been a more than willing fellow traveller but with slightly different expectations.
Perhaps with the exception of our trip to Australia, which was very much an adventure for its own sake, the journeys we have taken in recent years have all had the underlying goal of finding that perfect place to build our new nest. Unfortunately we have not been as successful as we might have hoped, for a lot of reasons which I do not intend to reiterate here. The result is that we are now having second thoughts about the whole idea of re-establishing ourselves in Europe. Indeed we have resolved to go forego foreign travel for at least the next twelve months and give more consideration to staying in the USA. After all we have family here on both sides of the continent, including especially four delightful grandchildren whose growing pains we enjoy being part of; and its going to be several more years before they will be joining the ranks of young globe-trotters able to visit us in far off places.
So what are we looking for???
Our combined needs and wishes for the perfect nesting site make for a complicated conundrum; collectively they fall into two main categories, location and site features. Location involves geography, climate, the natural environment, access to local shops, markets, cultural pursuits, fitness classes, health facilities, and these days more than ever, local political and social agendas. The features of a site that are relevant to our search are all the usual things, condition, age, size, garden, garage, basement, neighbourhood, and so forth.
As to the specifics of our particular ideal nest specification, we would love to find a well maintained two/three bedroom home with enough space for a “granny annex” and with a view of nature at its most glorious. This should be within a small garden to keep flowers on the table, fresh veggies in the diet and green fingers out of mischief. And to nurture our creative selves we would need space for a studio for my artistic wife, a garage or workshop for yours truly and of course . . . a study . We want to be close by a fair-sized town and yet not surrounded by dreary suburbanisation. Weatherwise we are conscious that advancing years and several decades of living in sunny south California have, between them, made the prospect of us accepting a life with temperatures regularly hovering around freezing point insupportable. At the same time we would like to enjoy once more the beauty of changing seasons, but without the need to shovel snow on anything more than a very occasional and rare basis. Geographically we remain undecided whether mountains or the sea are the more desirable background to a contented life; both have their virtues but an unspoiled view of the ocean nearly always incurs an undesirable financial penalty. The potential for hurricanes, severe flooding and uncomfortably high humidity for prolonged periods in the summer are also things we can do without.
The next question is where on earth, or, now we have for the moment taken Europe out of the bucket, at least where on this vast North American continent, can we find such an ideal place? California is fine in many ways but by virtue of its, in my opinion, highly over-rated climate is on the whole over-priced. Moving further north to Oregon or Washington appeals to the nature-lover in me but the prospect of numerous days of wet rainy and/or misty weather holds no charm for Celine. Continuing up the map and returning to my second homeland of Canada, in particular the coastal areas of British Columbia, ‘God’s Country’ to its devotees, is probably a non-starter for much the same reasons, although the prospect of a better national health service, and an increased pension for me, are quite appealing. Large mountain ranges and barren deserts harbour the extremes of weather that both of us wish to avoid so that would seem to eliminate a few more of the Western states; however, Colorado and perhaps some parts of Arizona stay on our must-visit list. The vast section commonly called ‘middle-America’ is a region about which I know almost nothing, apart from the weather that people experience there, and we don’t see many billboards, or read many articles, suggesting that the place we are looking for might be found there.
So we are left with the Eastern seaboard of which I have some brief experience, having lived on that side of the continent for many years and taken vacations with my family to New England and the Outer Banks of North Carolina. I also recently read Bill Bryson’s “A Walk in The Woods” which makes a good case for the Appalachian Mountains, and as I write, my son Tom and his family are considering a move to South Carolina. Keeping well away from Washington DC and New York and all that those two great cities imply in their own fashion, we are left with the pretty countryside of New England – too cold in the winter, Florida, Georgia and perhaps South Carolina – hurricane territory and far too humid in the summer, plus North Carolina, Tennessee, Kentucky and the Virginias, all of which have some beautiful countryside.
I have no idea what all this is leading to, and even less idea about when and where we will find that idyllic nesting ground. So for the next few months we will plan nothing, keep a careful eye on TrustedHousesitters.com and HomeExchange.com and see what, if anything, turns up trumps. It would also be a good time for me to get back to writing my ‘memoirs’, which was, after all, the original reason I set up this blog site. And then at the back of my mind I still have the feeling that we should go and explore a bit deeper into Portugal, though not the Algarve, and have we really rejected Central America in its entirety!!
Any and all suggestions will be gratefully received and carefully considered. Thanks for reading and I will keep writing. See you again soon!
