Home Is Where The Heart Is – Prologue 

 I suppose travelling has always been in my blood and sometimes travelling really can be a live changing experience. In the early days of travelling by myself, I was on a very tight budget. To maximise the travelling I could do, I spent about 80% of the time on working holidays with the remaining 20% travelling by train and staying in Youth Hostels. My measure of luxury then was a Youth Hostel near a train station. This is how I first ended up in Hull and Beverley. While spending four months travelling around England in between college and university, I had decided to play things by ear. I pretty much had the working holiday part sorted although there were a few changes to that during the summer. However, even though I had the weeks were I just played tourist pencilled in, I had no idea where I would end up.

The beauty of travelling is that you tend to bump into likeminded people. This is even more the case during working holidays where you tend to bond with people really quickly. A few people I met encouraged me to come and visit when I was travelling around the country. One of those people lived in Hull. He offered that if I come to visit Hull, he would play my tour guide. Hull did not have a youth hostel, but the nearby town of Beverley had. Better still, it was one of those youth hostels that was very close to train station. I had no other plans in this part of the UK, and I figured that may be a nice area to explore. 

I rather liked what I saw. Hull is a fascinating town with a lot of history. However, Beverley was love at first sight. This is just a very special little town. The youth hostel was rather special as well as this is located in a former Dominican friary that is located right across the way from the minster. Beverley really got under my skin. After this initial trip, I went back to Beverley every chance I got. When I had met Graham, Beverley featured during our first proper holiday together.

In 2004, we decided to move north. Ironically, the two places we looked at was Manchester and Beverley. However, Beverley ultimately won. I had a very happy period of nearly two years living in the town I love so much. Unfortunately, circumstances dictated that we had to move. Shortly after we moved there, Graham started working in the northwest. He only came home on the weekends. Once I had decided on a career change, I realised very quickly that the employment prospects in that part of the world were dire. Ultimately, I was offered a job in Manchester. It therefore was time to move again. As much as I love Manchester and the company that brought me here, part of my heart always stayed in Beverley.

It is somewhat strange that considering how much I love this place, since we moved away in early 2006, I had only been back once. This was over 10 years ago. On the visit then, I loved Beverley as much as I always had. However, our tastes in travel had evolved and, in the years, since, we had explored many different corners of the world. Travel within the UK was usually linked with Graham working away from home. Fortunately, this has become very much the exception nowadays.

Indeed, when I realised in late spring that I had two spare days of leave that I needed to take before the year was out, Beverley did not feature in this thought process either. I had hoped to visit friends in Germany. Graham was not too keen on that idea and our friends were not sure of their movements in September as one of them lives in Germany for about half of the year and in Florida for the rest. I was keen to nail everything down sooner rather than later.  We looked at a range of other destinations, but either the flights did not work for the days I was able to get leave, or they were crazy expensive. In the end, Graham suggested that we should spend a long weekend in Hull and Beverley. I did not need much convincing. 

In the end, this all worked out great. Not long after we nailed the details down, the knee issue that had been a slight irritation since the end of April became a huge problem. At its worst, I did wonder if my travelling days would be over once and for all. I am sure if we had decided to go abroad, I would have pulled the plug there and then. However, as we were staying relatively close to home, I had the luxury to see how things would evolve. Having this trip planned also gave me something to work towards in terms of my recovery. I had a deadline. Fortunately, all worked out and I was able to look forward to what felt like a home homecoming to me. After all, home is where the heart is.