Reflecting on our time away and returning from Australia to Yorkshire has heightened something elemental in me. Not just gratitude for travel, time and family, but a deeper awareness of earth, seasons, water and weather and how each landscape shapes the way we live inside our own skin, how we work, rest and play.

It’s been hard to put into words, the contrast. In Australia, the earth feels expansive. The light is high and the sun rises fast. The sky seems to stretch without interruption. Weather there often arrives more cleanly, bright heat, sudden rain, electric storms, ocean winds. The rhythm is outward. Early swims. Salt on skin. Dry warmth that settles into the bones. Even on cloudy days there seems a generosity of light. Water is vast and everywhere. The ocean commands attention and respect : for the rips, the swell, the creatures beneath the waves. Immersion is bracing and immediate. It makes you feel alive.

Yorkshire has such a different feel, somehow more subtle. The beauty is quieter, more contained. Dry stone walls, layer upon layer of green in the fields, moorland that feels steadfast. The weather changes its mind from one moment to the next. The light is softer, more nuanced. The landscape reveals itself slowly. There is a sense of depth here, maybe its the history in the stone, the living, breathing spongy moss. Familiarity in the curves of the hills. A sense of being held and cocooned rather than stretched. Water gathers and trickles rather than crashes. Rivers carve through limestone. Even the sound of rain against windows has a different intimacy.