Galloway, you beauty.

It’s five weeks since we got back from our summer holiday in the Galloway Forest and I am finally in a place where I can gather my thoughts and post them up here. The frantic days leading up to a holiday of list-writing, washing, weather app double-checking and packing followed by the intense aftermath of unpacking, rehoming and washing plus the beginning of term and back-to-work craziness, has meant my brain pretty much shut down in terms of collecting my thoughts. I watched friends post holiday photos on social media almost immediately upon return and marvelled at how they were able to organise and share their thoughts so rapidly while I was still pulling sand out of pockets and sticking name labels onto uniforms, unable to string a sentence together. But here we finally are.

We first stumbled upon the Galloway Forest in 2021 and I can now only describe the feeling we get when we touch down on Scottish soil as a deep, collective sigh of relief of arriving somewhere we feel truly welcome and comfortable enough to be ourselves. This year was our third year there so we knew what to expect as the accommodation provided perfectly for Rufus’s needs which really helps with that first deep breath of Scottish air. All we ever ask for when searching for a place to stay is a downstairs bedroom and bathroom (which sounds simple and straighforward but accessible cottages are usually hideously overpriced and few and far between). This place delivered everything we needed plus a whole lot more.

2023 has -so far - not been an easy year for our family to find time to connect with each other. I could probably count the number of full weekends we’ve spent together on one hand. Our house has literally fallen apart in a several places so we’ve had to forego our own relaxation and quality time at weekends in order to save money to get the DIY jobs done ourselves. We have been stretched more than ever with work and home-life and have been pulled in new directions with our ever-changing and growing children’s social lives. When we booked a week in Scotland back in January we had no idea how the year would pan out and how much we would desperately need time to just be a family of five sharing the same space as each other.

As the weeks and days grew closer and my holiday packing game reached new levels of organisation (and chaos unfolded all around me), the picture I conjured up in my mind’s eye was the five of us walking together and getting lost in our favourite forest. Not four of us walking and one of us being pushed. No, five of us walking together. There’s a very specific part of this forest, Kennick Burn where we enter into it off the main track and the smell of fungi hits you. You have to hold back swathes of moss draped over the branches to walk through the trees, treading on the soft crunch of years of build up on the forest floor, deeper and softer than the plushest carpet money could buy. The silence envelops you and when the sun streams through the gaps in the trees it’s pretty much heavenly.

I held on to that image as the demands of the previous four weeks of having three kids off school during possibly the wettest summer ever got increasingly overwhelming. Knowing we would soon be there, breathing deeply, walking, talking and connecting with each other in nature kept me going. Of course I knew there would be tears, arguments, accidents, whines of boredom and so many are-we-nearly-theres and of course I wasn’t expecting to get to lie on a beach, uninterrupted, and read a whole book (realistic expectations are our best friends) but I knew that getting away from the same four walls and landing somewhere magical for a week would be the reset we all needed.

Side note: I did manage to read a whole book that week but in little snippets here and there.

Our desire to get lost in the woods, sit by lochs and muck around in the sea and the sand meant that the days were pretty much all spent outdoors - just what we needed.

We know ourselves well as a family and we know that we love being outdoors together but we haven’t prioritised it this year. We’ve missed so many things this year that we would normally do; wild garlic season and blackberry picking to name a few. I did manage to collect some conkers this week so 2023 hasn’t won just yet. If the lockdowns of 2020 and 2021 gave us any lasting gift it was learning that family walks are what keep us grounded and together. We can’t stop the pull for our eldest of hanging out with her friends at the park and the local shop, we love and embrace the fact that Rufus’s carers take him out and about at weekends and school holidays and we are often more than happy to drop our youngest off at a play centre with another parent. This is the natural course of things: children grow up and find their own lives. But watching my eldest gradually pull away from us little by little this year as she transitioned from Year 6 into Year 7 has made me need a family holiday more than ever this year - to have her full attention and keep her close just for a little bit longer. To have all my babies close.

We know one day the kids will ask to go abroad for a holiday and at the moment we don’t quite know how we could give them that. How we would manage the logistics, find the right accommodation, transport Rufus’s equipment, travel around and most importantly afford it. We also know there will be a time in the future when our eldest might decide she doesn’t want to go on holiday with us anymore. With that in mind we are acutely aware that we are living in a moment in time that won’t last forever and with the added knowledge this year that our youngest is our last baby, we have held on to this holiday with our ‘young children’ as something quite precious. As with most families like ours, many of the big decisions in life are made to keep things as easy as possible for the child with special needs which is why we have done a cottage in Galloway, on repeat, for the last three years.

As much as we love the planning of places, picnics and pours of whisky, the unexpected chance encounters with other human beings are what adds the gold to an already stunning place. As a special needs family on the road, we can’t help but be an open book for the general public to have a little look at. We really can’t go anywhere surreptitiously because of Rufus so it’s almost expected of us that we’ll get to know at least one brilliant person. From drunken dog owners on the beach helping Rufus say hello to their furry friends to helpful shop owners speaking directly to Rufus about their finest Scottish sensory toys we were spoilt for choice but our absolute favourite human of the week was a photographer and gallery/cafe owner called Phil who worked a stone’s throw from our holiday cottage. We met Phil a few years ago, the first time we went to Galloway and popped in again not just once but twice this time. Phil is the kind of person you don’t forget. He is the epitome of real, genuine friendliness. He’s absolutely straight down the line, as real as you can get and was completely unfazed by having a noisy, messy, unruly child with special needs in his small gallery and cafe space. In fact, Phil can match Rufus’s noise levels with his loud singing along to the radio. He hugs like he might never see you again, he is one of those people who emphasises their point by touching you on the arm or knee while they’re talking, he sings his heart out to his customers, laughs loudly and talks to himself whilst making the brews. He can be talking about the success of his dahlias in the village flower competition and in the next breath talking about the importance of not being too cynical in life. He told the girls as we were leaving, “If you don’t do what your mam tells you, I’ll box you round the bloody ears.” He makes coffee that can keep you awake for days and captures the things we love about Galloway in his photography. We drove off from his cafe with smiles on our face and realised just by being around him, we felt that little bit more chipper about life. It’s so easy to get bogged down and overwhelmed when the days and weeks are hard and long but maybe it’s possible to counter those feelings just by singing at the top of your lungs, joking and laughing and just generally embracing the gift of being around other people. Of course, Rufus naturally got the good vibes from Phil, remembered him from last time and loved him like a long-lost relative. And now we know for next summer, we’ve not only got a beautiful place to return to but an old friend too.

*Rufus and Phil at The Gallery at Laurieston*

Until next summer.

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