Our journey to the sub-continent

Here we go again! We’re off on another mega journey – our longest yet, but this time without our bicycles, unfortunately. In just five days we shall be landing in Chennai, India, ready to embark on a month-long trip cris-crossing this extraordinary country. To say we’re excited is an understatement, we can’t wait to for the sights, colours, scents and sounds of the sub-continent to overwhelm us (as everyone who’s visited tells us they will). The origins of this epic trip have a somewhat more mundane origin, though.

A few years ago, me and Mike decided to each write down a list of the places we’d like to visit or things we’d like to do – a sort of bucket list, (although we didn’t call it that). Then over a meal out, we shared each other’s lists. To each of our surprise, we’d both put ‘visit India’ on the list. That was several years ago now, and although we’ve marked off quite a few things on the lists, a big trip to India seemed far off (at least until we’d paid the mortgage and could afford to save for big trips). Then a visit to B&Q changed all that!

On a visit to our local B&Q in early 2023 Mike noticed a posters adverting their ‘Gardener of the Year’ competition. Mike said ‘Have you thought about entering that?’ I had seen it before, and told him that I already had! I didn’t really think that my garden (lovely as it is) and which would barely be called a garden by some I affectionately call it a ‘yarden’, as it is little more than a yard in size, but it is filled with a lot of plants, would have a chance. However, the competition categories included one for ‘imaginative use of space’, and I thought that was good description of my garden! So I had filled in ann application form, given a description of my garden and sent in some photos. That was that, and I didn’t think much more about it. 

Fast-forward to June 2023 and I was at work in a management team meeting in Birmingham. My phone rang with a number I didn’t recognise – not unusual as I often get unannounced calls from boaters. I try to answer as many as possible, as they are usually calls when someone is in difficulty or needs help. I nipped out of the meeting room to answer. A very polite lady on the other end asked if I was Matthew, I confirmed I was. She then proceeded to tell me that she was calling from B&Q to tell me that I’d won the ‘most imaginative use of space’ category in the B&Q Garden of the Year category, and what’s more, I had won the overall competition. Gobsmacked was an understatement!

Winning the competition was amazing, but even better was the prize: £10,000! For a moment I thought ‘I can get a lot of plants with that’- but even I had to accept that I might not fit them all into my yarden, so what to do with the winnings? It didn’t take long to decide that the prize money could get us to India and give me a chance to visit gardens in a completely different environment to anywhere I’ve ever visited before. So after a year of researching and planning our trip – the departure date is almost here. We’ll be blogging our way across the sub-continent, so we hope you’ll enjoy our posts.