When I was 31, my then girlfriend left me and took our child with her. She went no contact, and I didn't know where she had gone.

We were renting a 3 bed house, so I gave notice on it, and moved to Galway on the west coast of Ireland.

300 miles from anyone I knew pretty much, though I had spent a few months in 2001 in the city and had made a few contacts.

I spent my first night in a tourist hostel, and I had £1000 to my name and a few belongings I had managed to fit in the boot of the car. I had driven from the east midlands to Ireland, its a good drive.

First full day, I found a room to let in an HMO pretty cheap (box room), then went job hunting. I already had a social security number from my few months before.

With an Address, I was able to set up a bank account locally, and within 3 days I found a job as my career industry seems to have vacancies where-ever you are.

A few weeks later, I had enough money to move to a one bed flat, and I got settled in pretty quickly.

I'd spend my evenings walking around the city, stopping in a pub here and there for a drink, and just tried to be sociable.

Also, I had work colleagues and they invited me out with them (the Irish are great for this!). I had also been able to re-establish contact with an old female friend who was still back in the UK, and she decided to come stay with me a for a month to see if we worked out, which we did.

And that was it until 2010, we had a house after the flat, steady job, decent income, and slowly expanded the group of people we knew.

Then, in 2010, it all came crashing down. My firm went bust and there was suddenly no work, as the global economic crisis hit Ireland hard.

We had to pack it all in and come back to the UK as homeless (meaning we could only go where we had family), and had to start all over yet again, though we had family close by, but no real friends who we were in contact with anymore. But we did it, and are fairly happy now.