I turned thirty-four somewhere between old stone, Welsh wind and a tram that had been climbing the same hill longer than I had been alive. This felt appropriate. Some people celebrate birthdays by staying home, cutting cake and answering messages. I apparently require transport, accommodation and at least one postcode I have never visited before. Somewhere along the way, birthdays stopped being occasions I simply celebrated and became tiny migrations. The number changes, and my first instinct is apparently to change the scenery with it. I still do not fully understand why. Perhaps I am trying to confuse ageing geographically. If thirty-four cannot find me at home, maybe it will assume I moved.

Annual leave had given us two weeks, which sounded luxurious until the days began disappearing with the efficiency of someone who had already checked the return date. Jan and I chose Coventry and Llandudno, partly because neither of us had properly explored them and partly because I have always believed new places make time behave differently. A normal Tuesday at home can vanish between errands, work messages and deciding what to cook. A Tuesday somewhere unfamiliar seems to stretch because everything asks to be noticed. The train announcements sound different. The streets are new. Even getting slightly lost becomes an activity rather than evidence that someone should have checked the map properly.

Coventry became our first lesson in time. The old cathedral stood roofless beneath the sky, its surviving walls holding onto the past without pretending it had never been damaged. Beside it, the newer cathedral carried on. I liked that. There was something reassuring about seeing both at once: what had been broken, and what had been built beside it. Birthdays have a way of making me look at my own life with similar suspicion. Another number appears and suddenly I am mentally inspecting the ruins and renovations. What survived this year? What changed? What did I rebuild? Which part of me is still standing purely out of stubbornness?

Not long afterwards, we were inside Coventry Transport Museum surrounded by bicycles, motorcycles, old cars and machines designed to go faster than common sense probably recommended. The contrast amused me. One minute I was contemplating destruction and reconstruction; the next I was looking at land-speed-record vehicles while becoming painfully aware of how quickly time already moves without mechanical assistance. Birthdays are funny that way. We spend most of the year complaining that there is never enough time, then one day arrives to remind us exactly how much of it has passed. Standing beside machines built for speed did not help.

After the cathedral, Coventry showed us a completely different part of its identity at the Coventry Transport Museum. The shift was almost amusing. One minute we were contemplating medieval stone, war and reconciliation, and not long afterwards we were surrounded by bicycles, motorcycles, engines and cars. Yet the museum made sense within the city because Coventry has such a strong history of transport manufacturing and engineering. Its collections tell the story not only of vehicles but of the people, industries and technologies that helped shape the city.

Then came Llandudno, and everything widened. Coventry had made me look closely at stone, history and streets. Llandudno pulled my eyes outward. The bay opened beneath a pale sky, the promenade curved along the water, and the Great Orme rose at the edge of town like it had been placed there specifically to make tourists reconsider whether comfortable shoes had been a serious enough decision. The air tasted faintly of salt. Wind pushed my hair across my face with personal enthusiasm. Gulls moved overhead like unpaid local officials monitoring everybody’s chips. Jan walked beside me, and for once neither of us needed to be anywhere quickly.

The Great Orme Tramway seemed like the correct way to spend part of a birthday trip because apparently ageing required elevation as well as transport. We climbed while streets slipped lower beneath us, houses became smaller, and the coastline slowly rearranged itself into something easier to understand. I have always liked that about height. From ground level, everything can feel disconnected and busy. From above, the roads suddenly belong to one map. Perhaps birthdays do something similar. They create a temporary vantage point from which we look back at the year and attempt to understand how all the ordinary days became a life.

Somewhere between Coventry and Llandudno, thirty-four officially arrived. There was no visible transformation. I did not wake with improved wisdom, superior posture or access to previously unavailable answers. My knees did not issue a formal statement. The world did not pause to acknowledge the administrative change. I was simply thirty-three and then, through a process involving midnight and absolutely no effort from me, thirty-four. Birthdays remain one of the few achievements for which continued existence completes most of the requirements.

Still, the number made me think, as numbers do. I have never been particularly good at letting birthdays pass without conducting some form of internal review. What did I learn? What did I lose? What did I gain? What should I have accomplished by now? Why do imaginary deadlines seem more organised than actual life? Thirty-four arrived while we were travelling, which was probably fortunate because unfamiliar streets gave me something else to examine before I could interrogate my entire existence over breakfast.

We celebrated with dinner for two, which suited me. No enormous production. No pressure to create the perfect birthday scene. Just Jan across the table, food between us, conversation moving through the year we had just lived and whatever was still waiting ahead. Long relationships collect a lot of ordinary architecture: groceries, bills, work schedules, laundry, discussions about what to eat, repeated conversations about whether one of us has already fed the cats. Travel shifts the walls around that routine. Suddenly the person you normally discuss household logistics with is sitting beside you on a century-old tram in Wales or walking with you beneath ruined cathedral walls.

Perhaps that is one reason birthdays make me want to travel with him. At home, the date can feel too familiar. The same rooms, the same routes, the same rhythm, only with another candle added. Somewhere else, the age attaches itself to something new. Thirty-four became Coventry stone, Welsh salt air, tram cables, sea wind and dinner across from the person who has travelled through far more of life with me than any map could show. A number is abstract. A place gives it texture.

I think that may be what I have been doing all these years without consciously deciding to. I have been giving birthdays landscapes. Instead of remembering only that I turned a certain age, I remember where I stood when it happened. What the air felt like. What I saw through the window. What we ate. What made us laugh. Which road we took. Which photograph required Jan to wait longer than any reasonable partner should because I was apparently still “just getting one more.”

There is also something about being away that prevents birthdays from becoming performance reviews. At home, it is very easy to compare yourself with the imaginary person you assumed you would be by a certain age. She is usually alarmingly organised. She has achieved everything on schedule, makes excellent financial decisions, never forgets passwords and presumably folds fitted sheets with emotional stability. I have never met her. Travelling makes her much harder to hear. There are trains to catch, streets to walk, menus to read and views worth looking at. It is difficult to panic about whether you are “where you should be” when you are standing somewhere you have never been before.

Maybe ageing frightens us partly because numbers appear so definite. Thirty-four. Thirty-five. Thirty-six. They look like checkpoints, even though life has never behaved like a straight road between them. We change jobs. We lose people. We begin again. Plans move. Relationships deepen or end. Dreams change shape. Some years feel enormous and others disappear before we properly understand them. The age increases neatly while everything underneath it remains wonderfully untidy.

Travel makes more sense to me because it is allowed to be untidy. You can take the wrong turn. Change the plan. Stop somewhere unexpected. Stay longer because the view is good. Leave early because the weather has become personally offensive. Nobody declares the journey a failure because the route changed. Perhaps I want birthdays to feel more like that too.

I do not want each new age to become a deadline I failed to meet. I want it to be another place from which to continue.

That thought followed me through Llandudno. The promenade, the wind, the broad curve of the bay, the tram climbing towards the Great Orme. From higher up, the town looked smaller and the sea looked larger, which is useful perspective for almost anything. Problems that feel enormous at street level do not always disappear with height, but they rearrange themselves. You see what connects. You notice how much lies beyond the piece of road you have been staring at.

By the end of the trip, I still did not have a complete answer for why I want to go somewhere every birthday. Maybe there is no single reason. Perhaps part of me dislikes sitting still while the number changes because sitting still makes the passing of time feel too visible. Perhaps I simply love travelling with Jan. Perhaps new places remind me that getting older does not mean the world is becoming smaller. If anything, another year gives me more context for looking at it.

Maybe birthdays make me restless because another year is both an ending and an invitation. Something has passed, yes, but something else has opened. There are still roads I have not taken, towns I have not walked through, meals I have not tried, views I have not stood in front of long enough to annoy the person waiting beside me. Ageing does not only mean time behind us. It also means we are still here to encounter what comes next.

Eventually, the tram came back down. So did we. Annual leave ended with its usual lack of compassion. The suitcase was unpacked, laundry reappeared, alarms regained authority and ordinary life quietly reclaimed the calendar. Thirty-four returned home with me. There was no outrunning it after all.

But now the number had somewhere to live.

It had Coventry’s stone walls and Llandudno’s sea wind. It had an old tram climbing a Welsh hill, Jan beside me, an intimate dinner, too many photographs and the peculiar satisfaction of entering another year somewhere unfamiliar.

I still do not fully understand why every birthday makes me want to leave town.

Maybe one day I will.

For now, I think I travel so the age cannot catch me sitting still.

And apparently, ageing requires a train ticket.

Forever young at heart,
Anj 🖤