Back to Yorkshire.

I forgot my camera so there are no views of Speyside. Shame as it looked wonderful in the hot sunshine we had yesterday. Instead here is a picture of one of the jobs that needs doing periodically...cutting the grass round the pond (once a month) and clearing the pond weed out (once or twice a year depending on the weather).

I am just back after a 8 hour journey, it took longer than usual because I hit Keighley at rush hour...fatal.

The journey wipes me out but we'll be doing it again in 2 weeks time, this time with a van load of furniture. No, the farm is not sold, well not entirely but we are being optimistic. Anyone would be mad not to love it here if they want a smallholding and are on a smallish budget. I have spent 3 evenings watching A Place in the Country on TV with my dad and I know what we have to offer is good value. It may not be chocolate box pretty and it may a tad cooler than the centre of Bradford but then who wants too much heat when you are working on the land. It saps your energy.

Our first neighbours went to Adelaide to laze in the sun but if lazing is what you want to do then don't even think of buying 11 acres.

A feeling of space.

So today the truck is piled with stuff, a pink kyack on top and a myriad of gear in the pick-up back plus somethings squeezed into the cab, just enough room for me and the dogs and my toothbrush.

The truck is being sold with the farm so the lettering can stay! The new owners don't have a collie so the picture may be a bit irrelevant but the ghosts of our 2 will run up and down the fields looking for foxes, cats, deer or frisbees.

It's a cool day but the sun brings a bit of light and warmth to my growing carrots and tomatoes. People have joked that living at the farm which is 1000feet above sea level will have been good preparation for the Highlands. Maybe but the landscape is so different that it is hard to compare. Here there are views down to the city and on a good day across to the power stations in the east. There is light and space all around.

The bungalow is wedged between others, all looking very similar. There are no views, just a small garden with too many trees. It will feel very sheltered but not, I hope, claustrophobic.

The Spey valley is lush and green with the beautiful river curving its way to the coast. The moorland is wilder and deserted with no features. The mountains to the west are grandiose, dominating the skyline for miles and looking stunning and beautiful in most weathers.

To see them, I have to walk up a hill and it takes 15 minutes. From there I have the space I will lose when moving away from here.

From Bradford to Speyside.

From a small holding above Bradford to a bungalow on the edge of a small Highland town...for life.

Not that we have lived above Bradford for long, only 8 and a half years. But it is the first time that we have left England to live in a foreign country. Does Scotland count as a foreign country? Not to me, as my mother was a daughter of a Grant and her mother married a Matheson who was from Stornaway. Not that I've been to the Islands but from the age of 0, my family was a regular visitor to the Highlands.

When my mum and dad retired, they went to live in Grantown on Spey and although my mum has now died, my dad who is from the Midlands, lives there still. Their home lies vacant since August 2010 when Dad went into sheltered accommodation and that is where me, and my Yorkshire spouse, are off to live.

The farm we live on at the moment was a dream come true, years of working up to having a place where we had fields and walls, sheep and cows, chickens and pigs, trees that provide a refuge for birds and foxes and the roe deer who has her fawn nestled in there. It is hard to leave but we do hope to be able to find some land near to Grantown so we can start again.

Meantime this is the story of this move...industrial, multi-cultural Bradford to small town living.