Having escaped the constraints of an office desk and a near suicidal ambition to be successful, my career finally came to a peak a couple of years ago. So having made a decision that quality time was more important than a big salary, I have spent the last couple of years walking the Swaledale fells, researching local history, restoring two dales cottages and rescuing an old cart shed/peat store in this northern most dale.

Rebuilding those old stone walls with new mortar, has not only restored these properties it's also allowed me to make the transition from an industrial town in south of the county to a new life in north, and to a small village whose remaining inhabitants work no less hard but have a totally different opinion of the environment around them. This remotest dale and it's naturally hard environment  bestows a special quality on these dalesfolk, and I feel privileged to have been taken into their community. Although I will always be an incomer they have made me feel at home. Its been more than a couple of years now to prove my worth and their acceptance.

So if you've watched those programmes on television and dreamed of the day that you would make the break to downsize or downshift (those new words that have appeared in the English dictionary in recent years), then you have met one such soul whose actually gone ahead and done it and built himself a website to share his experiences with others around the globe. But beware the reality is different than that portrayed on the screen. Be prepared to work just as hard if not harder, accept your doubts because you will have many and that there maybe casualties along the way if the cracks in your life long partnerships begin to open up as a result. If escapism is your thing to recharge your batteries then just live it through the eyes of another whose fingertips tap out his experience on these web pages and enjoy it. 

I shall always be indebted to  ' Old Jack Ned ' a local retired keeper and stonemason, a true dalesman of eighty years plus and a man of few words who went out of his way to put me in my place when I first stepped into his village. He was keen to show me how to rebuild that old peat house the way he wanted it. We have become good friends over time, my mate in his North Yorkshire dialect to a South Yorkshire incomer tells me many an interesting tale, he gives me good advice and shares his life long knowledge and skills of the natural things around the dale he has grown up with and loves.