“Lucy, it’s snowing outside.”
Like a kid on Christmas morning, those four words are all it took to shake me out of my stupor and have both of us jumping out of bed and pulling our clothes on.
It was an unexpected gift, having parked up late at night after a long cross-country drive and barely getting a glimpse of the view before it was swallowed into inky blackness.
On our first day in North Macedonia this was the last thing we’d expected, but then if constant travel had taught us one thing it was that the best things in life were the unpredictable ones.
We clambered out of our van, once blue but now dusted in white and painted black with the dirt and grime of months on the road, donning our hats and our cameras. It only took a few minutes of excited snapping before our hands were frozen, and we just stood and admired what little of the view the grey snow clouds permitted. Sloping ridges trailing down to the faintest glimmer of lake waters, each ledge fading into a paler shade of grey as they were gradually swallowed by the horizon.
We sat inside and admired the scene outside our windows, hands clasped around coffee cups and heater cranked up full, watching those little flecks of white gather into snowdrifts and feeling eternally grateful for the little surprises that make these moments on the road so memorable.