Travels!!!!

This blog was first intended to document the return of the Family Bignall to the UK from Brisbane and thus, I have let it wane over the last few years. I don't get much time for blog writing nowadays, but since this was always a bit of a travel blog, I thought I would write a bit about our more recent travels.

Firstly though, in order to put things into perspective, I'll digress a little bit. Looking back on it, it is only now that I realise that leaving Australia was more traumatic than I thought at the time. After all, I spent more of my life in Australia than in any other country - fifteen years - and of course the children had spent their entire lives there - except for Sam who was thirteen months old when we went. Though we were very lucky to be moving back to a beautiful part of the country, to a lovely old house and to relatives we had missed over the years, it was a huge wrench to leave Brisbane and all our friends and much loved family there.The general stress of packing up a huge Australian house and moving into a small English cottage, of worrying that we were doing the wrong thing by moving the children, all at a time when we were under a certain amount of stress already - hence the move - took it out of us. It didn't help that England seemed to have changed since we left and, instead of bringing the kids back to what we hoped was a more tolerant country and one where they would have easy access to Europe, we came straight back to the trauma of Brexit and massive family upheavals - which I won't go into, but, other than the fact that Rupert's father and my mother were hospitalised within months of us getting back - were not fun. Rupert became quite ill for a while, whilst my depression returned big time. For at least a year I didn't want to EVER go ANYWHERE again, outside England. I intended to stay firmly in one place FOR THE REST OF MY LIFE.

HOWEVER. Here we are now, nine years on, children fled the nest - one to Hemel Hempstead, one to Birmingham Uni and one back to Oz; we are postish Brexit and pandemic and the travel bug has certainly come back. I have been very fortunate to have visited Dubai, Crete, France, Antigua, Wales, the Czech Republic and Albania since last August and before the pandemic we had trips to Scotland, Ireland and Italy. I always mean to write a diary when I go to places, but never do, to the extent that I have been horrified to find that we often have conversations along the lines of: "Was that in France or Italy?" and "No! That happened in Crete, not Scotland!" and so I am going to write as much as I can remember from our trips over the last few years before I forget even more. Starting, of course, with our latest, our trip to Albania.