We were hugely fortunate to have had some incredible holidays. John-Luke just loved to be in the forest, or hiking, and he would always tell me how happy he was to be away with me. Japan was his favourite country, the last place we went before the pandemic and the first place we said we would go once we could travel again. John-Luke loved thinking about travel, we’ve got travel books for places we hadn’t even been yet, and a huge collection of stuff cut out from magazines about different potential trips. We both loved to take photos on our holidays, and John-Luke had bought me a brilliant camera years ago before our first road trip to America. We have some of our favourite pictures up on the wall in our hallway. John-Luke would always make me retake his silly pose photos again and again until he had the expressions perfect, and doing it always made him giggle! We have had so many hilarious experiences on our trips. In the blue mountains in Australia we rode an ex-coal mining car down a mountain, and didn’t realise there were different settings for the angle you’d be at going down, so we accidentally had ours on ‘daredevil’. We shot down at 90 degrees while the music from Indiana Jones played. Another hilarious time was when John-Luke got very concerned about theft when we travelled to Naples, and emerged from the airport toilet wearing a ‘secret’ money belt that he’d filled with all our valuables. It was completely visible under his clothes because he’d made it so full, and I have never laughed so hard. Our house is just full of little souvenirs and items that hold so many memories from all over the world.

Selfishly, I was annoyed when John-Luke told me he was leaving Historic England and you guys were going travelling in the US. But I know how much you guys love travel, so I was pleased for you, nonetheless. Just as I had got used to the idea, then covid hit. I then became annoyed that your mega trip was postponed indefinitely.

We shared a love of travel with John-Luke and Ellen, so much so that sitting through hours of each-others’ completely unedited holiday snaps became a shared joke. The edited version was for people who didn’t appreciate quite why it was necessary to take five pictures of the back of the campervan in the rain, or find such amusement in John-Luke’s characteristic deadpan pointing. Japan#1 (JL pointing at strange food) and Canada (JL pointing at mountains) stand out as particular epics on their side; they tried to steal the New Zealand crown back from us after their trip but despite JL’s protestations about not being interested in hobbits I think we still nailed it.