Location. Location. Location.
My Father-in-Law turned 70 this year, and by way of celebration the extended family (my wife’s four brothers and sisters with their children) went camping in the Forest of Dean.
It was a charming little campsite, complete with a small fishing lake and even a pizzeria, however its notable feature was that it straddled the border, half of the site was in Wales, the remainder, England. The kids enjoyed the notion of hopping from one country to another across the border line!
Being a large party we had a dedicated area on which to erect our tents, and being first to arrive we had our pick of the pitches. However this is where the hilarity ensued. We tested many areas, using multiple criteria to try and determine where would be best.
Where did the sun rise and fall? From which direction was the prevailing wind? Where was the centre of camp to be? What orientation worked best with our tent’s doors? Just how lumpy was the ground beneath us? And of course, lastly, was there a slope, because we don’t want to pitch in such a way that we all end up against the tent wall by the morning!
By the time we had made our decision, almost everybody had arrived and started pitching their tents, with a lot less care and consideration to the location. They just put them up, and before long their tents were ready and ours only just starting to be inflated (we had borrowed one of those new fancy tents that you pump air into - no poles that snap or bend!).
Now, I’m sure that everybody had a few issues with where they had pitched their tent (it’s camping after all and a little discomfort is to be expected), but we enjoyed several days with a tent that worked really well for us. It gave us the shelter that we needed, kept both cool and warm at the right times, opened onto the central communal area, didn’t have wind whipping through it and allowed the girls to sleep well.
It’s great when something works well for you and your family.
After the addition of Aléona, our second daughter, our family requirements prompted moving from the house that we were in (a small 2 bed was no longer accommodating us). This was a challenge, as not only was Aléona born amidst the covid pandemic, but we also needed a place to run the business from, as well as home educate our children.
We managed to find somewhere, and managed to move in, but unfortunately our time there was to be short lived, as circumstances rapidly changed for our landlords and we needed to move again, and fast.
Had it not been for the generosity of Naomi’s parents, we would have had a far more challenging time, and so it was that we joined them in their house. Two years later we finally have a more long term solution in place. Just like with pitching the tents, we have put a lot of consideration into where we are moving to, so that it works well for the family and the business.
Our new location gives us the space that we need and better positions the business to serve my customers in both Bath and Bristol. It’s also giving me the opportunity to develop new avenues for Airiam to travel down. I have some exciting additions coming! - join my mailing list if you want to make sure you hear about them.
These coming weeks mark our moving. That means that I won’t be operating as usual over this time. I’m still planning on working as much as I can, but it means that correspondence and repair completion will need to take a backseat to the physical process of relocating.
I look forward to this exciting new season and can’t wait to show you what I have in store for the future of Airiam.
