What is the essential nature of a successful retirement? - Carl Les
“For those who search all their lives / Are blessed with a welcoming road”, Last week I quoted these lines from a Home Counties based poet, Ed Burnett, found in the book about The Great North Road by Rob Cowen that I am reading currently.
By coincidence, and I am a great believer that things happen by coincidence – happenstance – two friends called to see us just after publication on Thursday. Both had lived in the Bedale area nearly all their working lives, only moving to the Black Country to be near to grown-up daughters.
On retirement they had a narrow-boat built on which to live, on their nearby canal, and occasionally slip their moorings and travel short distances to see the world from afloat. Not content with that, they also bought a camper van to do the same overland. This year they had left home at the beginning of June and came to us from the Yorkshire Coast to do some business in Northallerton and then to return home to the barge.
This way of life reminded me of two friends, both graduates of the Scottish Hotel School, who, having worked around Scotland and other parts, eventually came to own their own hotel outside Glasgow.
As they approached retirement, with no family to follow them, they considered an exit plan when a well-known housebuilder made them an offer to build houses on their site, way in excess of the earnings potential of a hotel operation. When they sold up, they bought a very upmarket American mobile home, and took it to France. Staying each night, or longer, on good camp sites, as they left they would flip a coin and turn left or right out of the gate. As far as I know they are still at it, exploring France at large, or at least going round in circles.
I think both examples capture the essential nature of successful retirement that all should be able to aspire to. A release from the routine of work, often very regularised, with sufficient financial resources and adequate good health to search the welcoming road, whatever that road might be or where it leads with some conditions imposed and some worries to confront, but none that overwhelm.
We took to the road this past weekend, to make an annual trip to Wales, to stay with friends who equally had left North Yorkshire after years of successful work here. Their search for a new home had been meticulous. It had to be in North Yorkshire or Wales. If in Wales it had to be in an area that was Welsh-speaking and Conservative-voting, and lets hope that situation continues after the next Welsh elections. A house of character but with some land with the opportunity of change. Each year we go we see another change, the refurbishment of a walled garden, now growing peaches, pears, figs and grapes on a south facing wall; an outdoor plunge pool; a grass paddock now planted with 7,000 trees, 98 per cent of which are native, six years in the planting and now grown so tall you must walk on paths cut through the wood.
This year’s new experience was two labyrinths. Now I was brought up learning about Greek myths and Minotaurs, thinking that labyrinths were tunnels below ground where you could get lost taking the wrong turn. Not a bit I’m told. They can be above ground and unlike mazes you can see where the land lies and there are no wrong turns to take. There are no choices, no side shoots to lead you astray, you start at one end and walk through many twists and turns until you reach the end.
And a further point of learning. At the start you pick up a small stone and hold it as you progress, channelling all your negative thoughts and emotions into the stone.
As you emerge from the labyrinth, leaving behind the difficult traverse you have made, you put your stone on the pile of others who have gone before and you leave behind your troubles.
The road was not welcoming. Unfortunately, like the majority, I could not leave work until after Friday lunchtime.
My satnav said it would be a three and a half hour journey, which I knew would be a little longer to collect a wheel of Wensleydale cheese to take to my hosts.
At each junction on the M62 traffic came to a halt as traffic queued to filter off and filter on. It was the same on the M56 near Chester, augmented by two collisions.
Friday afternoon traffic is overwhelming and it is difficult to know how to deal with it. More public transport might help, but most vehicles are coming from different start points and going to different destinations. There may be a mass of traffic but not a mass transit solution.
The M62 is already widened to four lanes, not without some degree of risk.
Perhaps the solution is better awareness in driving applications, encouraging moving to use the outer lanes near junctions to allow filtering off and especially on.
Carl Les is the Leader of North Yorkshire Council.