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Interview
1 February 2015 2.00 h

The pony made me do it

Carol Wilkinson Every Friday afternoon on El Punt Avui TV Nicole has a 20 minute chat with an English speaking Expatriate who lives in Catalunya. Here is the conversation with Carol Wilkinson.
Tell me, where are you orig­i­nally from?
Orig­i­nally, just South-East of Lon­don in a county called Kent.
And now it is Cat­alo­nia?
Girona. Re­ally it was down to my hus­band, we de­cided at some stage that we were going to make a move. And he did a lot of re­search, I mean a LOT of re­search! We had a check­list and one of the things at the top of the list then was the fact that I had a pony that I had re­tired and I wanted to bring him down here. He was just over 30 years old but I had him since he was a yearly, so I re­ally wanted to look after him. We wanted some­where where he thought he might be able to graze. But as time went on and we were mak­ing our de­ci­sion we re­al­ized that we re­ally couldn't move him and in fact we didn't move him.
Thirty is quite a grand age for a horse!
He was 33! The other rea­son for choos­ing Girona is that Girona is such a hub. If you want to travel, go back to the UK we have two air­ports. We have one in Girona as well as the air­port in Barcelona. Fan­tas­tic trans­port on the trains.
The AVE has now ar­rived in Girona.
Yes! We have waited a long while for that but it is fi­nally here!
Have you done a trip on the AVE all the way back to the UK?
I have, the other way. We flew to the UK for two wed­dings last year. We caught the Eu­rostar to Paris, with my grand­daugh­ter who was only about six weeks old then. There were four adults, we had nine pieces of lug­gage and we caught the metro across Paris!
That is brave!
Then we popped onto the fast train there and came all the way down. Then, you could only got to Figueres. But now of course it comes right to Girona.
A good jour­ney, would you do it again?
It was won­der­ful, you can see so much. In an aero­plane you see very lit­tle, you might see the Pyre­nees if you are lucky, which is quite awe-in­spir­ing. It is al­ways one of the won­der­ful things about fly­ing into Girona.
You have been here nine years, so this is very much home?
Very much home yes. Luck­ily for me my daugh­ter fol­lowed me over about three months after we came.
How won­der­ful for you, and you have a grand­daugh­ter.
Yes, she met and mar­ried an Eng­lish guy who has been here for six­teen years. They are both teach­ers.
What lan­guage did you learn when you first ar­rived here?
It is very dif­fi­cult, we had to make a choice and we de­cided ini­tially to choose Span­ish purely for the big­ger pic­ture as it takes us out­side of Girona. Part of me wishes I had started with Cata­lan as we see and hear Cata­lan all around us and we live in a Cata­lan com­mu­nity. You do au­to­mat­i­cally pick it up, al­though I couldn't say I speak it but I un­der­stand a lot. I know that Cata­lan vo­cab­u­lary slips into my Span­ish a lot.
When you moved here nine years ago, how was it cre­at­ing a new life for your­self, ad­just­ing and mak­ing friends?
It was very ex­cit­ing! We were in our late 50s when we fi­naly de­cided to come and there were a cou­ple of quite se­ri­ous rea­sons for the de­ci­sion. But ex­cite­ment was the dom­i­nat­ing fac­tor. We sold our house, gave up our work, got in our car with our dog and drove all the way down. Hav­ing al­ready bought an apart­ment in Girona.
So, you had vis­ited Girona be­fore mak­ing the move. Did you visit any­where else?
We were nearly sold on a place called Calella de Palafrugell on the coast. I think most peo­ple that go there fall in love with it. But dur­ing the win­ter months it emp­ties out and is very quiet. David, my hus­band de­cided Girona would be a good place for us to live. So we came and took a look. We were rea­son­ably im­pressed but then we came back a sec­ond time and we were very im­pressed! We set­tled on a lit­tle moun­tain out­side of the city called Mon­tjuÏc. We have beau­ti­ful views of the Pyre­nees. Snow capped moun­tains in the win­ter, blue, blue skies. You can't be de­pressed for very long liv­ing here!
So when you do live in such a place, like Girona, which clearly you adore, where on do you go on hol­i­day?
For the last few years, be­cause of the age of my chil­dren, we have been going back to the UK quite a lot for var­i­ous wed­dings, which we have in­cor­po­rated into a bit of a break for us. And last week we got back from a wed­ding in Mex­ico.
Can you give me a top tip for any­one com­ing to live in Girona or Cat­alo­nia?
Do your re­search and make sure it fits the life that you want. Make sure you can find em­ploy­ment, luck­ily for us we were re­tir­ing so didn't have that prob­lem. I think most peo­ple could give it a go as every­one is so friendly. It is lovely to bring up chil­dren, safe and wel­com­ing. We def­i­nitely made the right de­ci­sion!
I am so pleased to hear it! Thank you for chat­ting with me today Carol.
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