moved

Debbie Dawtrey moved from Cambridgeshire to south-western France in 2023 and opened a hotel, but she’s found that one of the most significant problems has been difficult to overcome

Many of us dream about relocating to some idyllic corner of Europe to soak up the sun and embrace the advantages of Mediterranean living. However, beyond the complications of European red tape – and the considerable cost – there’s another significant obstacle that numerous people fail to consider.

Debbie Dawtrey, who relocated from Buckden in Cambridgeshire to south-western France in 2023, reveals that one of the most substantial challenges she’s faced is feeling socially cut off.

Debbie, 64, established a boutique hotel in the Charente, situated in the charming village of Confolens, and explains that while she remains extremely occupied throughout the tourist season, the colder months can prove incredibly isolating.

She told The Times: “I didn’t know anyone in the area and while the summers are busy with guests, contacts are transient and the winters are especially hard as people hunker down and close the shutters.”

Debbie, who is unmarried, explains she’s discovered a method of reconstructing her social connections by arranging a monthly supper club for fellow expats: “Every month we’d take turns in hosting a dinner and had lots of fun,” she explains, “it helped broaden our social circle.”

Debbie emphasises that becoming isolated is remarkably easy when relocating far from relatives and friends, and recommends “you have to really make an effort to put yourself out there”.

Even when you’ve attempted to master the native tongue, the capacity to initiate spontaneous conversations can prove far more challenging than forming friendships back in Britain.

While some individuals might frequent a neighbourhood pub, or perhaps become members of a fitness centre, these are more readily available in bigger towns and cities. Establishing a fresh existence in the French countryside – or indeed in a remote UK community, can prove quite demanding.

Even those working with substantial financial resources can find themselves yearning for what they’ve left behind. Earlier this year, Kate Ferdinand spoke candidly about her homesickness following her relocation to Dubai with her footballer husband Rio.

On her ‘Blended’ podcast in February, Kate became emotional and confessed she was pining for her family and friends back home. Kate and Rio relocated to the UAE last August and while her husband is “loving” his new existence there, matters aren’t quite as positive for Kate.

“I am enjoying it, but I miss home quite a lot,” she acknowledged. “I can’t talk about it because I get upset. I feel like we’ve opened our eyes to a different world. But I love London. I do feel happy in Dubai, but I’m just missing a part of me.”

A source close to the pair told The Mirror that the Dubai move hasn’t turned out as Kate had anticipated, and she considers the gleaming Middle Eastern metropolis “soulless.”

They revealed: “She’s struggling. She’s really missing home. She’s not enjoying it. And even though she’s got the kids and she’s got Rio there, she’s homesick. She can’t stop it and it’s very difficult. It’s just not home.” Kate is also feeling the absence of her stepsons. While Rio’s daughter Tia, 14, made the transition to the UAE alongside the family, his elder sons Lorenz, 19, and Tate, 17, stayed behind in the UK to pursue their promising football careers – a decision that has caused Kate considerable heartache.

Opening up on her podcast, she admitted: “I miss the big boys a lot and I’m struggling with that. I know this decision is right for my younger children and as a family we are settled there, but the boys are following their football careers. So they’re doing what they want to do, otherwise they’d be with us.”

She went on to say: “But it’s very hard because we’ve been through so much as a family and we’ve always been together and that’s a huge adjustment.”

Moving a town down the road requires a huge amount of money and incredible engineering expertise, but not losing the community in the process might be even more complex

One sunny day last August, a 713-tonne, 113-year-old church was lifted off the ground and placed onto a specialised 224-wheel transporter to begin its journey five kilometres down the road.

The Gothic revival Kiruna Church is a beloved building, once named the most beautiful in Sweden. It would’ve stood where it did to the west of the Arctic town for many decades more, had the ground not threatened to swallow it up.

A great cheer went up as the church arrived at its new home, traffic lights, lamp posts and even a bridge having been demolished to make way for the timber structure. Among the spectators was Sweden’s King Carl XVI Gustaf and children who clambered onto roofs for a better look. The widely publicised event made headlines across the world and the typically capable Swedish engineering team earned many metaphorical slaps on the back.

And then, a week later, everything changed.

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“They smashed us in the head,” says Kjell Törmä, a local journalist and lifelong resident. The 67-year-old has chronicled the town’s move since 2004, when mining company Luossavaara Kiirunavaara Aktiebolag, (LKAB) first told the population what its digging had done.

A century of going down into the 2km iron ore deposit had caused fissures to spread from the mine to the town centre, roughly 2km away.

It was decided that the town must be moved, or else its foundations would collapse. At first, 4,700 residents would be moved to the safer east of the town – their homes bought and then demolished by LKAB, which is legally required to fund the estimated £737m relocation effort. Twenty buildings, including the church and iconic town hall, would be driven to safety.

“Almost everyone in Kiruna accepts this change, but many of us don’t like it. It is tragic in many ways. We have to accept it or accept that we will lose our jobs,” Kjell told the Mirror.

“In my family, my mother and father worked for LKAB for 75 years together, one of my brothers worked there for 20 years. I have done a lot of jobs for the mine as a freelancer. Almost every family depends on LKAB.”

As reluctantly accepting of the town’s move as locals may have been before, what came after the church relocation has caused far more disquiet. Eight days later, once the world’s press had left the town, 6,000 more locals were told their homes would be demolished.

“The mining company is the enemy. A lot of people are taking the money and leaving,” former Kiruna resident Hannes told me on the night train to the town.

The young dad was returning north, having swapped his hometown for Malmo in the far south several years ago. “I find it depressing to go back now,” he said, in between marshalling his sociable toddler as she made her way down the carriage.

Hannes’ parents have also left and soon, so will his cousin Kjell. “When they told us we had to move, I was in shock and sad for a week. Then my wife and I decided we would turn a page in our lives,” Kjell explained.

As technically remarkable as the great shift east is, and as deep as LKAB’s pockets seem to be when it comes to paying over the odds to homeowners, moving a town is complex.

Kjell is losing a home he’s spent 35 years building. Each day, he can hear machines working away in the distance.

“Many people who have moved from Kiruna and come back say it’s not my town anymore. I have always answered, ‘no it’s not the town for us elders, but for the kids. They grew up with this, it will be their town.’ But, a lot of memories are disappearing all the time.”

Exploring the old and new sides of town, their distinct personalities are immediately obvious. When city planner Per Olof Hallman drew up the blueprint a century ago, he selected the best location in terms of climate, placing the traditional Swedish timber home on a south-facing slope, close to the mines and with a favourable aspect and microclimate. Streets followed the terrain to avoid wind tunnelling and to maintain beautiful views for the residents.

In the new town, tall modern blocks of flats have been built in a dip, which blocks the view south and, according to a University of Gothenburg study, can be 10C colder than the old town.

The slightly ramshackle feeling of a community that has grown organically over the years is replaced with something a little more familiar.

“It looks like anywhere else in Sweden now,” Hannes says.

This is not to say that the move has not been attempted with great care, attention or love by those in charge. Indeed, Kjell says LKAB have managed it “very well” on the whole.

But it is undeniably difficult to transport a place that isn’t just physical buildings, but memories.

Göran Cars, the current urban planner for the Kiruna municipality, acknowledges the challenge. “I was stupid coming up here, because I assumed that the way to maintain identity and preserve history was to move physical buildings,” he told Dezeen.

“We are moving the church. When I speak to people they say: ‘Yes I know that, but what about a grave? How about the birches?’ I didn’t understand that. They are small trees! But they are 100 years old – as old as the church. I get the question time and time again: ‘What about the birches?’ So now we are moving the birches.”

The complexity of the challenge is sobering. This is, after all, Sweden, where the structures of local democracy are strong, the engineering sector is world-leading, and the concerns of nomadic reindeer herding Sami are increasingly heard. It’s also a project backed by one of the world’s biggest iron ore mines.

These are advantages other places won’t enjoy. And there will be many more such places.

The United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report warns that the predicted 1.5 centigrade increase in global temperatures will lead to an average sea-level rise of between 26 and 77 centimetres by the end of the century. With 2C of warming – which looks increasingly likely – the Greenland ice shelf could melt, triggering a rise of up to seven metres.

The world’s largest cities Miami and Mumbai are under threat and the Maldives will likely be uninhabitable by 2100. Not just 10,500 as in Kiruna’s case, but millions of people will have to move.

LKAB and Kiruna Council were approached for comment.

The U.S. Navy Independence class Littoral Combat Ships (LCS) USS Tulsa and USS Santa Barbara, which are configured for minesweeping duties, have appeared in port in Malaysia. Both of these ships were last known to be forward-deployed in the Middle East, having arrived in Bahrain in the past year or so to take the place of a group of now-decommissioned Avenger class mine hunters. Now, as Iranian attacks on commercial ships have caused a virtual halt to maritime traffic through the highly strategic Strait of Hormuz, these ships have emerged thousands of miles away. The extent to which Iran has seeded naval mines in the Strait already is unclear, but this remains a huge threat to the future security of the waterway and will have to be taken into account in any future effort to reopen this critical waterway.

A spotter in Malaysia posted pictures of the USS Tulsa and USS Santa Barbara, which are said to have been taken today at the North Butterworth Container Terminal (NBCT) in the Port of Penang. Mike Yeo, an Australia-based defense and aviation reporter, was among the first to call attention to the particular significance of the images. TWZ has reached out for more information.

USS Tulsa and USS Santa Barbara are among a select number of Independence class LCSs fitted with a mine countermeasures mission package, or “module.” In its current form, the package includes towed mine-hunting sonar for the ships, Common Unmanned Surface Vehicles (CUSV) with mine-sweeping gear, and mine detection and neutralization systems carried by embarked MH-60 Sea Hawk helicopters. We will come back to this configuration later on.

CUSV®

Airborne Laser Mine Detection System (ALMDS) Video

When it comes to why the ships are now in Malaysia, TWZ also reached out to U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM), which directed us to the U.S. Navy’s Fifth Fleet. We were then directed by Fifth Fleet back to CENTCOM. CENTCOM is the top U.S. military command for operations in the Middle East. Fifth Fleet is the Navy’s numbered fleet in the Middle East, with its commander dual-hatted as head of Naval Forces Central Command (NAVCENT). Fifth Fleet and NAVCENT are headquartered in Manama, Bahrain, in the Persian Gulf.

We have reached out to the U.S. Navy and U.S. Indo-Pacific Command (INDOPACOM), as well.

Pictures available through the U.S. military’s Defense Visual Information Distribution Service (DVIDS) show USS Tulsa was in port in Bahrain at least as of February 9. Separate images also show USS Santa Barbara operating in the Persian Gulf on January 30. The current disposition of a third Independence class LCS, the USS Canberra, which had also been forward-deployed in the Middle East at least as of January, is unknown. Whether any other mine countermeasures ships may not be headed to the Middle East is also not known.

A review of satellite imagery in Planet Labs’ commercial archive shows no evidence of any U.S. warships being in port in Mamana since February 23. The United States and Israel launched their joint operation against Iran on February 28.

Moving U.S. warships out of port in Bahrain ahead of the current conflict was a prudent security measure. The Gulf state is well within range of Iranian missiles and long-range kamikaze drones, and U.S. military facilities in Manama did subsequently come under attack. The U.S. military’s own strikes on Iranian naval vessels in port have underscored the vulnerability of ships sitting pierside.

Why the decision was made to then send the USS Tulsa and USS Santa Barbara thousands of miles to the east is unknown. A host of factors may have come into play, including the availability of suitable friendly ports and diplomatic considerations.

Regardless, at least two-thirds of the warships intended to be available for tasking for mine countermeasures missions in the Middle East are presently in a completely different part of the world. As noted, USS Tulsa, USS Santa Barbara, and USS Canberra, were forward-deployed to the region in the first place explicitly to fill gaps left by the decommissioning of four Avenger class mine hunters last year. The former USS Devastator, USS Dextrous, USS Gladiator, and USS Sentry left the region for good aboard a heavy lift ship in January. There are only four Avenger class ships left in active Navy service, all of which are forward-deployed in Japan, and are also slated to be decommissioned in the coming years.

How many of the Navy’s Independence class LCSs, in total, have been configured for the mine-clearing mission to date is unknown. In addition to USS Tulsa, USS Santa Barbara, and the USS Canberra, the USS Kansas City was at least being fitted out with this mission module as of last year.

The Independence class LCS is a far more advanced ship than the Avenger class mine hunter, and does offer new standoff mine countermeasures capabilities, including aforementioned CUSV drone boats and helicopter-borne systems. Still, questions continue to be raised about whether metal-hulled LCSs with mine countermeasures packages are adequate replacements for ships purpose-built for this mission. As TWZ previously wrote back in January:

The [Avenger class] ships themselves have fiberglass-coated wooden hulls to reduce their own vulnerability, particularly to mines that detect targets by their magnetic signature.

The Navy has long intended to replace the Avenger class ships with LCSs configured for the mine countermeasures duties. However, delays with the LCS mine countermeasures and other mission packages, or “modules,” as well as other persistent issues with both subclasses of those ships, repeatedly delayed those plans. The LCS program had also originally envisioned it being possible to readily reconfigure the ships for different mission sets by swapping out modules. However, the Navy is now deploying LCSs in largely fixed configurations.

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Questions and criticism about the suitability of metal-hulled LCSs to take on the mine countermeasures mission have come up in the past. Both subclasses of LCS are also much larger than the Avenger class design, which could impose limits on how close they can get to mined or potentially mined areas. LCSs are better able to defend themselves against other threats than the Avengers, but they still have relatively limited firepower, which has been a separate source of criticism for years now. There would still be a significant need for tertiary support to protect LCSs during mine-clearing operations, which are slow and complex, and carry significant risks, even in benign environments.

In May 2025, a top U.S. Navy mine warfare officer gave an unclassified briefing detailing significant ongoing issues with the LCS mine countermeasures, according to a story published just this past week by Hunterbrook Media. Copies of the briefing slides that the outlet published say that employing the CUSV requires hours of prep time, and that the drone boat’s sonar sometimes has trouble spotting threats, but that the operators may have no indication of this until data is assessed after a mission. Visual confirmation of mines using the AN/AQS-20 mine-hunting system has also proven challenging “even [in] the relatively benign turbidity of SoCal [Southern California] waters,” another slide explains. The briefing also highlighted a number of potential “single-point failures” both in terms of mine countermeasures systems included in the module, and the equipment required to deploy and recover them.

Lastly, and perhaps most importantly, one of the briefing slides noted that “LCS was designed as a multi-mission platform” and “all of these other missions reduce time for the ship and Minemen to gain proficiency in MCM [mine countermeasures].” To reiterate, the Avenger class ships were purpose-built for this mission set and had crews trained to match. Mine-clearing operations are slow and complex, and carry significant risks, even when carried out by experienced personnel in benign environments.

In the context of the current conflict, there have been reports in the past week or so saying Iran has at least attempted to lay mines in and around the Strait of Hormuz. The U.S. military also says it has been actively targeting mine-laying assets. At the same time, Iran has laid mines in and around the Persian Gulf in the past, and this remains a real point of concern. Iranian anti-ship cruise and ballistic missiles, kamikaze drones, and uncrewed explosive-laden boats further complicate the threat picture for commercial vessels and any warships attempting to help clear the way.

Athletes in T-shirts, fans applying suncream – have these been the Summer or Winter Paralympics?

If you were to listen to American Patrick Halgren, who called the conditions at the Milan-Cortina Games “tropical” and “like surfing”, you would think the former.

Until you were told he is a skier.

Since the 1992 Games, the Winter Paralympics have always been held in March, usually starting just shy of a fortnight after the conclusion of the Winter Olympics.

That means conditions during the Games have often been more spring-like than winter, with temperatures peaking at 26C four years ago in Beijing.

While such temperatures have not been felt in Cortina, it has been warm, and until a huge dump of snow fell the night before Sunday’s final day of competition, snow had only been seen on the groomed competition pistes.

A blazing sun on several days of competition, mixed with some rain, had caused snow on the courses to turn soft and slushy, which in turns sticks to athletes’ skis and snowboards.

Last weekend a third official training session for the Para-alpine skiing downhill events was cancelled in a bid to maintain the piste conditions.

While many athletes have praised the efforts of organisers to keep the tracks in as good a condition as possible, conditions on Friday during the men’s giant slalom events were far from ideal, with British visually impaired skier Fred Warburton describing it as a “bathtub of Slush Puppie”.

His guide, James Hannan, said: “The snow surface was changing every single gate, so we never knew how the ski was going to react.

“It was almost like survival of the fittest.”

It certainly proved that way during the sitting event, which followed the visually impaired and standing races: 18 athletes from a field of 37 failed to make it to the bottom of the course.

“The organisers need to look at scheduling with obvious changes of the climate that we’re experiencing,” said Warburton.

“Both the Olympics and Paralympics want to be top spectacles of skiing and allow athletes to put their best work down.

“We need to look at the schedule and move it forward in future. That’s way beyond my pay grade, but it seems pretty logical to me.”

Warburton’s words echoed those of retired American Paralympic snowboarder Amy Purdy, who this week said in a video on TikTok: “I don’t believe that the Paralympics should be happening right now.”

Her comments came after the snowboard cross course had to be adjusted following numerous crashes in training, partly because of its design but also the warm conditions.