Moving to Scotland and saying goodbye to the @vigorunners Tough Love 10

In just over a week I’ll be lining up on the start line of the Vigo Tough Love 10 for (what I suspect will be) the final time.

For me this will be a closing of a door and the opening of another, one that has been slowly opening for the last 12 months – but it’s taken a huge amount of effort to reach Scotland and this post is a reminder to myself both how hard it has been and why it has been worth it.

October 2015

We had flown up to Scotland for a friends wedding in Perth. ASK was not much more than a year old and as I bimbled around the town I remember thinking ‘this is lovely’. I did some running through local forests and took a trip up to Dundee – wonderful. I even toyed with the notion of living here but commented to the GingaNinja that, ‘workwise it simply is not practical’. However, that trip cemented into me an itch that I could not quite scratch away.

Then we encountered a succession of events that led to a change of heart about that itch…

May 2016

I travelled alone up to sunny Scotland for the Skye Trail Ultra. Being on my own and travelling at my own pace and exploring and the little books in and around this beautiful location gave me a lot of time to think. The words of Andy O’Grady, Jeff Smith and Neil MacRitchie all rang in my ears about what a glorious place Scotland is.

I remember after the race sitting on the coast – looking across the little cove I was nestled in and just getting a good feeling. Now maybe that was something to do with the joy I’d gotten from finishing one of the toughest races I’ve ever undertaken but it’s just as likely that it was the feeling of freshness I had being around the serenity that Skye exuded.

Then of course the shit hit the fan…

June 2016

The English and the Welsh raised two fingers to the European Union. A giant fuck you to Europe was just the incentive I needed to leave England and with the Scottish being so vocal about their preference to stay in the EU – well it seemed a no-brainer.

October 2017

More than a year after the referendum, with Westminster seeming more and more like a basket case and not wanting to let our daughter grow up in such a negative environment we took a research trip to Scotland to test out the viability of the move.

December 2017

More discussions followed, exploration of job, transport, schooling and running options were extensive – we wanted to go in with our eyes wide open.

Now satisfied that we could do it the decision was made to move to Scotland.

Now it was just the best way to do it and this was the hardest part – we knew that we needed to close down life in England with all haste but because of our child was growing we needed to move her up with life already established in Scotland.

Not an easy task.

January 2018

The first thing that was going to make a significant difference was the passing of a driving test. I mean crikey I’d gotten away with it for 23 years but now I finally I finally had to sit a test.

This started back in the September when Scotland seemed to be increasingly likely and when January came round I took my first test and passed.

The trouble was I was now going to have to gear up for driving solo to Scotland and back for the arduous job interview process and this was to begin just ten days after passing my driving test. Gulp!

February 2018

The first job offer came on the first trip north of the border and although I accepted it I soon changed my mind upon meeting the team and getting the grand tour – I felt I was the wrong fit. Now while I would normally not be put off by this I understood that the months following the initial move would be challenging and therefore wanted the job to not be an issue.

I fretted over this for several days until an event made the decision for me.

That event was the day my beloved spaniel, ThunderPad, died and I believed this was a sign that it was not the right job and so we, as a family, decided not to go at that moment.

It felt like the right decision but it was one I was going to revisit many, many times over as I struggled to find a new role that I really wanted.

I worried that Scotland might not be able to offer the right creative challenge and the marketplace was such that excellent opportunities were few and far between. Job offers thankfully were not in short supply but separating the wheat from the chaff was a tiring process and more than once I thought about packing it in and simply staying put in the Home Counties.

However, I didn’t and this meant life continued on two fronts, my southern life and my attempt to kickstart a new Scottish life.

On the southern front February 2018 brought me to my fourth Vigo Tough Love 10 and another wonderful event. I remember thinking that this was probably my last crack at it and so I spent most of the race just soaking up memories and fun – my finishing time didn’t really matter (and when I do return next weekend my time will also not matter, I’m there to enjoy myself).

Post Vigo the following few months were a succession of trips northwards – always a return trip in a single day to maximise my time and this was brutal in lots of ways. I was eating like a horse to keep me awake on the days where I would be driving for as much as 20hrs before getting up 2hrs later to do the day job. The result of this was that my weight went up. Training bottomed out to near zero and the back injury I was carrying was made significantly worse by long hours behind the wheel of the car. What does amaze me is that I didn’t kill myself on one of those trips – many times I could feel my eyes closing in exhaustion, many times driving badly down narrow lanes not knowing what I was doing and there were many times that Scotland’s rather challenging weather patterns tried to hurl me from the motorway in a moment of windy madness.

It felt a very chaotic and challenging time and I would often find myself in a haze of emotions, often unable to articulate to anyone just how destructive the process was being. I found what little good humour I have was being eroded as I felt the weight of expectation on my shoulders. Sleep, what little there was, was often filled with nightmares of my own making and although I’m not a control freak I disliked not being able to identify a clear route to a successful conclusion.

August 2018

However, by August 2018 I had found a role that I felt was worth making the move for, in a good location and at an acceptable salary level. And so with all the energy we could muster the machine went into action. However, in typical fashion, there was always going to be another hurdle.

The hurdle we faced was ASKs birthday trip to Disneyland Paris. The fact we agreed my new job on the day we were flying, looking back upon it, feels insane.

I remember racing back from Scotland to London that day in time to pick up the family to head to the airport, it seems madness now but this was the reality of the lives as we looked to go north of the border.

What I was clear on though was that ASKs birthday should not be ruined by this.

France should have been relaxing and in many ways it was brilliant but it was fraught with anxiety about looking for a new place to live and the decision we had just taken. I spent as much time looking at flats in Scotland as I did making merry in France.

Added to this I also attempted the Trail de Haut Koenisbourg ultra marathon which was a stunning mistake. A combination of being very ill and also having done no training since March culminated in me completing just 21km of the 100. Embarrassed by my own performance I faux limped into the checkpoint to DNF but I wasn’t carrying an injury – I was just fucked.

August and into September was manic – I barely remember it, life zipped around me and I felt massively out of control again. The GingaNinja was amazing during this period as we searched for a house for me to live in while at the same time starting the closing down of our southern life. I was now moving to Scotland while the family remained in the south east of England – not an ideal situation, but the plan, for better or worse, was coming together.

October 2018

On September 29 I moved into a 2 bedroom flat not too far from Edinburgh when I should have been testing myself on the Ochil Ultra. Still I was there and I recall the huge sense of relief when I was able to start the new job and dream quietly to myself of a life of Haggis and Irn Bru.

While up here alone it seemed sensible to spend some time running and so when I wasn’t working I was out pounding pavements and trails. Sadly not nearly enough though as most of my weekends were spent bounding back to the south to support the GingaNinja in the sale and packing up of the house.

However, I did manage to squeeze in the Jedburgh Three Peaks, Tweed Valley Ultra and The Nocturnal to round off a sadly forgettable year of run performances. However, I had arrived and in the moments where I was not thinking of my family 450 miles away or wondering about how the buggering hell we were going to get everything up here sensibly then I was able to appreciate the beauty and opportunity that Scotland presents.

Christmas Eve 2018

I wonder what you were doing the weekend before Christmas last year? Well whatever you were doing it probably wasn’t what I was doing.

I was due to fly from Edinburgh to Gatwick when the drones were spotted over the airport and suddenly the big move looked like it might be in jeopardy. However, my own bloody mindedness determined that I was going to make it back and I found a way trough to Luton – the UKs shittiest airport (IMO). Hitting the ground running when I laid eyes on my house I set about packing more stuff up – desperate to get as much up, in this trip, as possible.

With the aid of ASKs amazing childminder and two of her children we managed to get through most of what needed to be packed and I even squeezed in my two rather mature monkeypuzzle trees. All that remained now was to get a few hours sleep before we began the 55mph journey to our new (temporary) home.

I don’t recall what time we started, I don’t recall how slow it was – but I remember it was nearly 18hrs to get from Kent to West Lothian and both the GingaNinja and I were destroyed by the months of effort.

I spent the Sunday before Christmas lifting fridges up stairs and constructing bike sheds and trying to squeeze our house full of stuff into one room of a two bedroom flat and a small storage unit! Ha.

However, I got the best Christmas present going and that was my family (and new hound) all in the same place.

And what I can conclude is that it has been worth the effort.

February 2019

And now it’s a week before the Vigo Tough Love 10 and we return to Kent just as the house is about to sell. We are there to say, ‘au revoir’ to Kent and for me to hopefully go out with a bang at my favourite race.

And to the future…

Well blow me, there’s a new house on the horizon, the puppy is growing at a rate of knots and there’s races to be run – The Highland Fling, the Arran Ultra and the Ben Vorlich Ultra to begin with but others will join the list? The better news is that family are settling even if our accommodation is currently less than ideal – ASK especially has adapted well to new surroundings, new friends and new opportunities.

Moving to Scotland happened because of the UK leaving the European Union and me wanting to get away from parts of the UK that could not be tolerant of the EU but it has expanded into so much more.

Scotland I hope is about my work/life balance, my own curiosity, its about new running opportunities, new family opportunities, it’s about finding the beauty in the everyday again, it’s about exploring the world around us, it’s about giving two fingers to all of you who voted ‘Leave’ and it’s about helping Scotland to reach independence from the UK.

These all seem very achievable and to my mind very reasonable.

But there is one thing about England I’m going to miss and as I prepare for my first race of 2019 it’s on my mind – the Vigo Tough Love 10. Funny the word love should be in the title, I must love this race a lot – I’m doing a 900 mile round trip to run in it – and I’ll be a little sad because I know I’ve had good times in England, in Kent and most importantly in Vigo but I won’t be back.

So, however I run next week I will be going out on a (sad) high.