Пара с рассеянным склерозом провела год в путешествиях по Европе на автофургоне

We present an extract from One Year, the new memoir by Susan Bennett. Susan Bennett and her husband Chris are living normal, busy lives until their mid-thirties when a shock diagnosis of multiple sclerosis is delivered to both of them – in the same week, in the same hospital. This is one in a series of final straws that nudges them to follow their dream, simplify their lives, and take to the road for a year in their trusty camper van, Hans. One Year charts their journey around western Europe and Scandinavia. Cutting the Ties that Bind On a bright afternoon after 10 slow Scottish days, we arrived in Alnwick, with its castle, Titanic links and, most important of all, one of the best second-hand bookshops in the world. Turning a train station from the 1920s into a bookshop was a stroke of genius. Barter Books is long, tall and has gorgeous green tiles lining the walls, as well as real fire-places in little nooks where you can drink cups of tea. There's even a cute toy train on tracks above your head, swooshing along above great literary quotations. As I wandered happily among the shelves, the realisation that I now lived in a van was sinking in – I could not buy a book since it wouldn’t fit in our full cupboards. We need to buy less stuff. Things don’t make you happy... I had enjoyed my perch on this particular high horse when it involved things other than books, but now I struggled. We need your consent to load this rte-player contentWe use rte-player to manage extra content that can set cookies on your device and collect data about your activity. Please review their details and accept them to load the content.Manage Preferences Listen: One Year author Susan Bennett talks to Miriam O'Callaghan My life has always revolved around books. Every childhood memory contains one: all the Ladybirds, Blytons, Dahls – even Mum’s hardback horrors or romances. I read all the time. I was also fortunate to have the World’s Best Teacher to feed that growing desire for all things wordy. Mr Keown’s classes were a delight. Studying English literature at university was inevitable, and so the shelves stacked deeper and deeper, higher and higher, until my 'library’ was bigger than any house I ended up living in. Occasionally I’d half-heartedly clear out and give some books away, but I’d miss them, those friends, and notice the gap every time I glanced over at the shelves. And so I spent many a happy hour in Barter Books flicking, holding and stroking old volumes before sighing and leaving (empty-handed). I had chosen two real books to bring on the trip – a dog-eared copy of The Great Gatsby and my beloved small edition of the first Calvin and Hobbes collection – and thanks to an e-reader I had hundreds of others, too. It’s not quite the same, but I was becoming accustomed to the electronic reading experience. It would do for van life, I reasoned, picturing the many boxes of my paper friends currently languishing in Auntie Anne’s spare room. Would they be okay without me for a whole year? The sun came out as we drove on to the open-air Beamish Museum in Stanley, a wonderfully creative way to engage with England’s pull towards industrial revolution during the Victorian and Edwardian years. The streets, vehicles, buildings and even animals make for an immersive experience, and staff in period dress complete the feeling of time travel. Trundling along on a bumpy old tram was fun and fascinating. We fell for those old adverts and bought Fry’s Chocolate Cream and ordered chips. Wrapped in newspaper and cooked in fire-stoked animal fat, they were the most delicious chips either of us had ever had. Ah, the good old (dangerously unhealthy) days. We were barely two weeks in at this point, and inevitably the old trams made us wonder if all was well with our tourism business but the moment was fleeting. I chose to look elsewhere. It’s hard to cut the ties that bind in order to run away for a while, but worth it for the freedom of the open road. There’s discern-ment in learning how to cut those cords while acknowledging that they might need to be knotted again in the future. Cut them with room to spare, then, and simply set them down while you walk away. They will be there on your return. The tram trundled along its tracks in this lovely place and I closed my eyes to treasure the sound. Now I was free. Morning came with a gentle lightening of the grey sky and we set off for Robin Hood’s Bay, a fishing village on the eastern Northumberland coast. It sits atop rocks that jut into the sea, all higgledy-piggledy loveliness. Tiny cottages cling together on the steep streets with equally cute and tiny gardens filled with chairs and flowers and decorations. I half-expected Hansel and Gretel to skip past or a witch-like finger to beckon me into a dark room in one of the cottages. As always when staggering around such places, I daydreamed about living there one day; and, as always, the dream cleverly sidestepped the climb and lack of parking and inordinate expense. Why ruin a perfectly good daydream with reality? The tram trundled along its tracks in this lovely place and I closed my eyes to treasure the sound. Now I was free. I slept well that night. I was glad that sleep was coming so easily; it was one of the things that had been a struggle in those intense months and years before we left. The brain is so complex, choosing to carry on as if everything is fine until around three o’clock in the morning, when it suddenly wakes you up with a yell that keeps echoing until dawn, calling out questions and fears and anxieties that become absolute certainties... until daylight comes and you can once again argue back and find some perspective. What if the business failed? What if I got sick again? What if we both lost our mobility or memory? What if? Next up was Castleton, where stone cottages, timber-topped shops and cafés spilled out into art-filled squares. The many bands of Harley-Davidson bikes did their best to destroy the peace (and mostly succeeded) but the sun was coming out, the cider was chilled and the river burbled nicely. We climbed Mam Tor, the famous ridge path that rewards your hard-fought ascent with stunning views over the Peak District and Edale Valley. ‘Mother Hill’, as its name means, entices with every step, with rocks underfoot and curious sheep watching your laboured approach – and then frustrates your progress with false summits aplenty. As we panted and put one foot in front of the other, I was proud of our bodies: continuing to fight against a debilitating neurological condition and carrying us up steep paths to burst upon a stunning viewpoint. After two hours, we raised our arms aloft and stood beside the stone waymark at the top. We’d done it. We’d climbed a Peak District hill. We’d accepted a difficult diagnosis. We had followed our travelling dream. One Year is published by Gill