I was in my late twenties, when we moved to a village between Swindon and Marlborough in Wiltshire.

We bought a pebble dash three -bedroom semi- detached house, overlooking a thatched cottage of ancient origin.

I already had two children and produced a third the following year at home with a midwife that could only work if she had had a couple glasses of sherry!

The baby became like a Christ child as everyone in the village bought flowers and food as they filed passed his crib.

As time went on. A beautiful farmhouse up the road came up for sale, we stretched our budget to buy it, and moved all our belongings in a wheelbarrow to the new house.

It had atmosphere. You felt the past in it and it even had a ghost in the stables, now a garage.

We became immersed in village life

This was no gentrified village, but a mixture of ancient and modern.

Our house was filled with children and people.

There was nothing that I did not know about the people of the village.

I fostered children and welcomed people for bed and breakfast.

I became severely ill but I had such a good friend who herself had 6 children and I had 5, 3 of my own and two foster children. She looked after my children and my husband whilst I spent 6 weeks in hospital.

It was the first time in my life that I felt I was rooted in a territory but we were too young to settle and oved on in 1973. And now in 2023 we returned.

This has become such a particular weekend.

We re-visited that farm house that we had lived in all those years ago. It is now super posh, yet my son who left that house aged eight had a complete visual memory of how the house was, and I joined in with his memory and relived the past.

Our next port of call was to that wonderful friend with her 6 children, but now she has countless grand -children and great grand-children,

We entered her warm and welcoming kitchen that was full of people and children. How to recognise them?

We wanted to relive the countryside that my children remembered, so around twenty people, this included the old people of the village that remembered us. and many children came with us as we traversed paths down to the washpool, a fast-flowing stream and then up onto the Downs.

Children ran and played.

           ‘Stop’ cried someone.

We stopped.

‘The children wanted to break ice in puddles’.

No-one suggested that we should move the children on, they were paramount.

We returned to the warm kitchen. The thing that defined it was the warmth of feeling. Warmth to us and warmth between each member of the family and an awareness of the family towards my wonderful friend, food was supplied for 28 people. she was still in charge, yet the family supported and protected her and mysteriously washing up was done in a flash.

We were transported to the past as if time stood still and we were also reminded of the simplicity of life and the importance of allowing children the freedom to be themselves and the pleasure of family relations. My son remarked there was not a single teenager looking at a screen.

Have we missed something with our busy lives?

In 1984 myself, my husband and our four children left West Africa to travel north of Benin into Niger and crossing the Sahara into Algeria to the Mediterranean and on through France back to the UK.

My husband renovated an old work’s Land Rover to make the journey. His essence is embodied in the fabric of the vehicle.

By an extraordinary and twisted tale of events, a Land Rover enthusiast obtained the Land Rover, where it was found in a garage where it had remained for 25 years, complete with all the accoutrements that we had taken with us to cross the Sahara.

On this one weekend in 2023 two strands of our life came together in Wiltshire.

We walked through once familiar woodland and gentle Downs to the next village to a pub, to meet up with the Land Rover.

It was a strange and emotive experience. A rotund and smiling man stepped out of the Land Rover brimming with enthusiasm, and there was that vehicle looking exactly as it was in 1984, when we set of from Onigbolo, West Africa to cross the Sahara, I felt the present shadow of my husband as I touched the cool steel. It was complete with artefacts that included the original washing up liquid bottles that had been placed in the doors. My idea was that if we were attacked by bandits, we should squirt washing up liquid in their eyes! There were also the prayer mats we had used to lie on the desert sand and look at the clarity of the clear starlit night, and sleep.

The piece de resistance was the complete goat skin that we hoped to use as a water cooler that was hung on the side of the Land Rover. Unfortunately, the man who sold it to me conned me, it was not a properly cured skin and when we filled it with water, it came out pink! Here it was again. but a shrunken version of its former self, a small almost square black thing. I held it lovingly.

I sat in the driving seat holding the steering wheel and the green fields of England faded and I was trying to hold a steady course on the red earth rutted roads of Africa. This memorable weekend came to a close and we drove home with our minds filled with the rich experience of life.