You just know when it’s time.
The light shifts. The days hold onto themselves just a little longer. The air stops feeling so damp, so heavy. And suddenly, you’re standing in the kitchen, staring out at the Galician hills, thinking about the Moors.
Pickering starts creeping into conversation. “Maybe we should head back for a bit,” one of us says, casually, like it hasn’t been gnawing at the edges of our thoughts for days. Bertie picks up on it immediately, ears twitching, that sixth sense dogs have when something’s about to change.
And that’s that. Bags packed. Ferry booked. The quiet hum of Yorkshire pulling us home.
The Drive
We’ve done this journey so many times now it’s basically muscle memory. Across Spain, up through France, the long push to the ferry, then that final stretch where everything feels suddenly, unmistakably British. The first road sign in English. A Greggs at the services. A bloke in a Land Rover who seems deeply offended by the concept of indicating.
By the time we roll into Pickering, it’s late. The house is cold, but it smells the same—faintly of books and old wood and whatever ghosts houses collect when they’re left alone too long. We flick the kettle on, light the fire, and just sit for a minute, listening to the creaks and settling sounds of home.
Bertie does his usual routine—inspecting every room like a slightly unhinged landlord doing a surprise inspection—before finally curling up by the fire with the air of a dog who has been through an ordeal and will require several treats to recover.
The First Morning Back
Unpacking? No. There are priorities. And the first one is the Moors.
It’s early, cold enough that you still need gloves, but that’s exactly how it should be. The Moors shouldn’t be mild, shouldn’t be gentle. They should wake you up with their sharp wind and the kind of silence that isn’t really silence at all.
The landscape stretches out, vast and rolling, still raw from winter. The heather’s not back yet, but the land is shifting, stretching, waking up. There’s a smell—earthy, damp, the kind that sticks to your clothes.
We stand there, breathing it in.
Nothing else in the world feels like this.
Spain is wonderful—beautiful, warm, intoxicating in its own way. But Yorkshire… Yorkshire has its own kind of magic. It doesn’t try to charm you. It just is. And if it’s in your bones, if it’s home, you’ll never quite shake it, no matter how many places you go.
We’ll see friends later. Family. Pubs, lots of them. There will be pints and pies and long, winding conversations in beer gardens that are still too cold for beer gardens.
But right now?
Right now, it’s just us, Bertie, and the Moors.
Home.
