Hello Scotland! What an amazing journey it has been so far too!
This blog is just a little bit about how and why we came to live in such a beautiful part of the world.
So…once again, hello :)
Let me introduce myself; my name is Selina and I am originally from Marlow, Buckinghamshire. I moved from Swindon, Wiltshire with my little family, to Forres in Moray last April (2022) and I’ve been living in a dream ever since!
So what brought me up here you ask?
Let me take you back to 2020 (briefly, because for obvious reasons, it was rather horrible)…
…Just before lockdown, I was running a successful newborn and maternity photography business. I had started it in 2017 and was just beginning to get a good amount of bookings each week.
Unfortunately, COVID hit and I was forced to close until the lockdown could lift.
During this time, my mother caught the virus and passed away. She was only 60 and so full of life. Losing her was the most painful thing I have ever gone through and I completely shut down. I lost interest in everything and could barely function.
While all this was happening, my husband, Phil took over looking after our 3 year old daughter, Thea whilst running his own business - a pub in Wiltshire. It was a very very difficult time.
Roll onto the summer of 2021 and we’ve started to live a new “normal”. I’m trying to repair the damage done to my business through lockdown and incorporate a safer way of working, while Phil has sold his share of the pub in order to spend more time with us as a family.
In July 2021, we decided to take a trip to visit my brother in Edinburgh and here is where everything changed.
We very quickly fell in love with Scotland, to the point, I actually cried when we left. I desperately wanted a change in our lives, I had never been happy living in Swindon and Scotland was calling in such a way I had never felt before.
Phil and I both agreed that if we were going to make such a big move, then it needed to be now before Thea got too settled into her new school life that she was due to start in September.
So, the house went up for sale and was sold instantly for the full asking price - hurrah!!!
We spent our last Christmas in Swindon and then started house hunting around the central belt of Scotland to find our dream home, staying close to my brother and his family.
We found a few in the area, but nothing was really standing out, so we started looking further north…and somehow kept on going!!
In February 2022, our offer was accepted on a house in Forres and we were SO excited to get moving!
Phil and I both got ourselves full time jobs and found Thea a lovely school to go to. All of a sudden, life was looking so much brighter.
There were many many bumps along the way and the move itself was so incredibly stressful. We ended up having to start our jobs in April and live in Air BnB’s for 3 months due our house in Swindon falling through, but that is a very long story for another time!
On the plus side though, we got to do lots of exploring before the big move date came.
On the 21 July 2022, we finally got the keys to our beautiful new home and moved all of our belongings in…from the garage, attached to our new home ha ha ha! During our 3 months of living out of suitcases, the owner of the house we were buying was very kind and let us store all of the contents of our old house into her garage, which was tight! I honestly don’t know what we would have done without her.
Now, all that’s left is for me to bring my photography business back to life and all will be perfect (blog post coming soon)!
So there we go, a very short version of how and why we moved up from England.
If mum’s passing has taught us anything, is that life is never guaranteed and we have to make each moment count
The beautiful views of Forres and Findhorn from Califer View