A Whole New Pace

As I packed our worldly belongings into boxes in preparation for our great adventure I discovered many reminders of just how fortunate we are to be travelling in this day and age. Old lonely planet guides weighing slightly less than house bricks, hand written journals full of my past adventures, piles of photo negatives . . . and letters. Old letters and postcards from old jobs and past trips. From a time before email and Facebook. A time when long distance phone calls were charged at bank loan rates. A time when embarking on any kind of travel meant isolation from friends, family and home . . . and I didn’t even consider myself that old! 

It’s hard to imagine that time  – when travel required endless hours of research and diligent planning – as Colby pulls up Google Maps on the M6 and confirms that we are indeed heading in the wrong direction. (To think how much angst this fingertip technology could have saved us in Italy in 2007.) I’ve somehow managed to buy a car, open a bank account and score myself accommodation in a stranger’s house without even setting foot in the country. I would’ve been hard pressed to achieve this much back in 2007.

But in a quiet little village in Cumbria, in the north of England . . . beyond the (albeit very unreliable) Wifi, Facetime conversations with family back home and daily texts from friends, I find myself stepping back to a completely different time . . . and running to a completely different pace.

We chose the little village Ireby as the starting point of our adventure, thinking it would be the perfect place to regroup, slow down and ease into our ‘new life.’ (And of course because a fantastically simple house-sit happened to arise, which we were fortunate enough to secure.) Nestled among a spectacular patchwork of hills, broken only by hedged laneways and set to the soundtrack of sheep and birdsong, the village houses 300 people, one school and a pub. Not even a shop . . . aside from the ‘farm shop’ which apparently sells milk and eggs, if I could only find the front door.

The villagers stroll the narrow main street, consulting one of the local notice boards for everything there is to know about upcoming events.  Coal is delivered in a blue truck, by a bloke with black hands, and a mobile butcher and mobile post office cruise through the town, once a week on a Monday.

And the pace doesn’t change in the small surrounding towns – which offer a few of the comforts of the 21^st Century. Large-chain commercialism is confined to a single low-cost Aldi, Asda or Lidl on the outskirts of town, any other large supermarkets replaced by independent green grocers, fish mongers and butchers. And while a Bunnings Warehouse would have come in handy for kitting out our van, there is something pretty special about the family owned businesses which have been passed down through the generations. One particular hardware store, established in 1836 in Cockermouth is almost as old as our country! And even in the large centres like Carlisle, small independent businesses seem to have survived the ages, easily outnumbering the big chain stores.

And scattered among the landscape are more endless reminders of a time even before ironmongers and pet stores, and it is difficult to take a stroll through the pretty country without imagining the peasants and serfs of the Middle Ages, going through their daily lives: Making the two mile trek to a tiny church in the middle of a farmers field, Gathering around the butter cross in the days when this place was a market town, Feeding limestone into one of the many lime kilns which still dot the fields.

But as I enjoy the slower pace, and at the same time reach out to everyone with my first blog, I am only grateful that we live in a time where I can enjoy the best of both worlds.