Are you ready to order…A new life?

While many of us are guilty of taking far too long to make even the simplest choices, it is astonishing

to hear how people can make the most profound, lifechanging, decisions almost on a whim.

The birthday card that sparked a family’s global upheaval; the bored online scrolling that triggered a

sudden shift from South America to a new life, new home, and a totally new career in the Dales.

The Great Move North post-pandemic Rush Hour

And then there’s the choice that’s made not because we’ve spent too long frowning at menus or property search engines. It’s a choice made to save the lives of those we love and those left behind.

Those are the almost incomprehensible choices millions of people have had to face in Europe for the second time in the span of one lifetime. To think that so many of those fleeing the unimaginable horrors of Russia’s genocide in Ukraine will have passed Babyn Yar represents a horrifically shocking coincidence. This memorial, on a ravine near Kyiv, marks the site of the Nazi butchery of 34000 jews.

Putin’s sick ‘anti-Nazi’ excuse to justify his onslaught on the innocent, eight decades later, sets a new low in the staggering double-speak of deluded, bullying despots. For families caught in the crosshairs of this there has been no time to dwell on grim re-runs. Time only to jump in the car – and drive.

That’s exactly what one multi=generational Ukrainian family chose to do last month. And, after an

epic journey through Montenegro, across the EU, through a forest of Whitehall bureaucracy and on

to the Roscoff ferry, they have finally made it to England, managing even to bring the family pet dog.

Back home grandparents have chosen to stay, their fate in the hands of Kharkiv’s brave defenders.

Soon, this family will visit the Dales for the first time. What will they see? How will they feel? What

choices will they make for their long-term future...this time not set against a backdrop of terror?

After a long, dark, worrying winter I finally set up the final interviews for Series Two of Great Move

North trying to concentrate on the amazing stories of those who have chosen to make this place

their home. But I couldn’t help wondering how many other desperate families, en route now, are

navigating tides of history to wash up in a setting so truly special those of us fortunate enough to

have already placed our order may be guilty of perhaps, sometimes, taking it all for granted?