China

In February 2025 I decided that I needed to leave my job and by July I had left. I desperately wanted to see some of the world and without action it just wasn’t going to happen. On the 23rd of February I sent a message to my friend Will Frank if he fancied a trip to western China. A week later were on a video call and the planning begins.

I had initially met Will in 2018 whilst working at CERN, the particle physics laboratory on the border of Switzerland. He had been there on a 3 month project and I had finally found a friend at the lab. I distinctively remember saying to myself “I have found a new best friend”. Well, he was only there for two more weeks and I wouldn’t be seeing him again for quite sometime. A year later I am at the introductory CERN accelerator school in Romania and am pleasantly surprised to see his face again! Two weeks of intense and often confusing lectures on physics later and we have become pretty good pals! Three years later I find myself working in Oxford at the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory where Will was also working at the time. Somewhere during those years Will mentioned his trip to through Sichuan and Yunnan provinces in china and was keen to go back! Four years later we’re going to China!