It was five years ago today that Mr. VP and I (back then, we were still in the throes of new love) travelled to Cornwall to see French band Air play at the Eden Sessions in Cornwall’s Eden Project.  We built a week-long holiday around it.  We stayed above someone’s garage in the strangest self-accomodation I’ve ever known, in Polperro.  It was our first taste of living together, with wall-mounted kettle (bizarre) and view of endless lush-green cow-filled fields.  We had been together almost a year by that point.

We turned up to the concert and were duly amazed.  The sun was setting by the time we got in, the stage was set up in one part of the Eden Project, we loved it completely.  We bought Cornish pasties, considered building our own clay oven, and found a good spot to watch the band.  It was Friday the 13th, but we didn’t mind about that, we’ve always had good Friday 13ths.

When the bands started playing, the domes lit up with DJs playing music within them, and along with the Super Furry Animals, we watched the sun set and the place come to life.

Then Air come onto the stage and we were amazed again.  It was the tour promoting their new album Talkie Walkie.  Eventually they came to an early song “Kelly Watch the Stars“, when low and behold their Perseid meteor shower began lighting the sky.  I lay back on the blanket we’d brought, and watched the amazing show of bright, wonderful things darting across the sky.  Suddenly it was like everything slowed-down.  Everyone else was oblivious to this wonderful moment, some saw the shooting stars but I did more than notice them, it was like I could feel them.  It was a pretty amazing night, an amazing concert, and little did we know it was something that was about to change our lives forever.

The last time I saw a shooting star, I watched them coming down in the night’s sky just before my grandmother died.  I saw them in the Eden Project that night, and months later we were moving up to Northumberland to begin our trials and tribulations up here.  I missed the Perseids last night (I was far too tired), but I have vowed to try and see them tonight – they may have peaked last night, but will still be visible for a couple of days, and the starscape is particularly nice right now, if you can see it for the clouds.

I can’t think of a better way than to spend a day being ‘pleasurably lost’ in the countryside, a million miles away from work worries, from roads and cars and scary things.  To return to pastoral activities, to wood-smoke and heather-clad hills.

{This was where I spent some of my day off. A very, very old window-seat in a ruined castle in the heart of Northumberland. Save a few visitors, I was completely alone with book, pen, camera and thoughts. How long had it been since someone else sat there and wrote?}

Last weekend we went searching for neolithic rock art, and though we found some possible cup marks, we found something more precious: freedom.  We were lost to everyone but ourselves.  We climbed a hill and were met at the top by a view that we could not have dreamt of.  On such a day, such a plain, ordinary day, we found such amazing beauty.

Our forays into history and wilderness are happening regularly now, it is an idyllic escape into the unknown with often little information on where we’re going, just vague ideas and a wish to get out and go places, to learn something about our surroundings.  Whether we find what we’re looking for or not is irrelevent – we often find something much, much better.

We found a hill, a view and time to talk to our friend Frenchy.  We found time together, time to laugh and explore.  I found wild honey bees, a nest of them, and a view – what a view! – we ran and walked, played and felt alive.  All of that on our doorstep.  I have a lot more respect for Northumberland now, and especially as I learn about it’s history.  The landscape on my doorstep, this very ancient land, has come alive to us both now.  We’re enjoying it’s beauty and it’s majesty.