A Couple Again in Bologna

For the first time in many years, my wife Miras and I headed off on a trip together without our son Raf in tow. He'd been such a fixture on our lifetime of adventures since his birth back in 2010 that it felt super strange to be heading to an airport hotel without him. But he was enrolled in an online school now, and they care about attendance, so a couple's trip it was.

I guess we couldn't have chosen a more romantic location: Bologna in Italy, with a side trip to the microstate of San Marino. And we made the most of every minute, behaving more like teenagers than the older couple we'd become. Yes, holding hands all the time was back, along with sweet moments over coffee, pizza and flickering candlelight, followed by nights when we rediscovered a little of the carefree abandon we'd thought we'd left behind.

I can't pretend my ongoing shoulder problems didn't follow me to Italy too, but the depressive slump I felt whenever I saw the bumps in the North Sea wasn't present here. I could still walk, talk, explore and eat. While I had an ultrasound lined up for when we returned to rule out anything sinister and cancer-related, I already felt in my heart that my shoulder was just frozen and that I wouldn't be surfing for a long, long time.

Thankfully, city trips like this one were still viable, so I'd begun redefining some of my dreams, shifting them towards travel rather than surfing. And the side trip to San Marino bumped up my country count by one more towards the new target of 100. What a country — and the perfect place to fly my drone.

I can't say flying home was as much fun as flying out. I had to face up to a surf-free future: a winter staring at the waves (or watching Raf surf) rather than revelling in them. As a surfer, if you are one, you'll know that's a devastating proposition. But it was a far better one than melanoma in the bones, which, thankfully, this no longer felt like.