After an 8 month sabbatical, I’m back working in the delightful countryside of Yorkshire. When I worked here before I hadn’t had the experience of working in a large city before, so a stint in Leeds and London soon sorted that out. I’m quite happy to be back in the country again, but I do miss some of the perks of the city…

I’m working on Broughton Hall Estate, which, according to the website, is:

“One of the most successful and prestigious business locations in the UK, Broughton Hall Business Park is set amidst 3000 acres of beautiful Yorkshire parkland and is within easy reach of Manchester, Leeds and Harrogate. The historic listed buildings have been carefully and aesthetically converted to high quality office accommodation with sophisticated communications, ample free parking, peace and security.”

Sounds nice, and it really is. The offices are surrounded by trees containing squirrels (not all of them), there’s a stream containing trout, stepping stones, some nice paths through the trees and plenty of open fields containing sheep. It’s a tranquil place to work, make no mistake. It also has the clear advantage of being a mere 10 minute drive from my house, as opposed to Leeds, which is a 40 minute train journey or 1 hour drive. The other big plus point is working with a real programming language (well, real hard), C++. Oh yeah, the final plus point is working with some good people, which is nice.

I’m already missing some of the nice things about working in a city though. Swanky sandwich shops, cafés, hustle and bustle, loads of nice looking women walking around all the time (ahem) and being able to put cheques into my bank (the Alliance and Leicester don’t have branches everywhere, unfortunately).

Still, working in the country isn’t bad, some people live in the country and work in the city. And as the quote above states, it’s not far from Harrogate or Leeds. Nice work if you can get it!