Claire

“I met Peter in 2004.

I’d been to visit family in Scotland. It was a was a grey, overcast Sunday as I drove down the M74, travelling south to meet a friend in Newcastle.

At one point as I was driving along somewhere near Abingdon, I noticed a car overtake me. I can’t put into words exactly what, but something about the driver caught my attention so I decided to overtake to get a better look. I can remember noting that the guy was really attractive.

We began flirting by overtaking one another.

It continued like this for a few miles.

As we got close to Carlisle, traffic slowed to a halt.

Pete wrote his number on a piece of paper and held it up against the window. I scribbled it down.

We left the motorway at different junctions, but carried on chatting on hands free as we continued on our journeys. I found out that Pete lived in Birmingham and had been in Edinburgh for the weekend. I was living in East Yorkshire! We both agreed it a stroke of serendipity to both be in Scotland that weekend and be travelling home at the same time.

When I arrived in Newcastle and told my friend about this guy I’d been speaking to on the motorway she thought I was mad, but I couldn’t stop smiling. I wanted to meet him.

After an immense amount of calls, texts and emails we caught up a fortnight later for my birthday in Leeds, which was a midway point.

We moved in together a month later, traveled the world a year after that and ended up living in Sydney for nine years. 

We married in Sydney in 2011, before returning home to the UK with our first child.  We’re now a very happy family of five with three energetic young boys. 

Sometimes it pays to talk to strangers.”