Big News - I'm Leaving Yorkshire!
After almost 40 years it's time to move on.....
This month has been momentous for Matt and me, because we put our home for over 30 years on the market. And amazingly sold it in less than a week!
After a total of almost 40 years of living happily in Yorkshire, we are moving on.
I moved in with Matt on New Year’s Day in 1994. Since that day we have shared a modest three bedroom semi-detached house on an estate in a village near York. When Matt bought this house, he expected to stay for about 5 years.
But we both got settled in our respective work, and we loved where we lived. Our village had a rural feel, but it was less than four miles into the centre of York, so we felt we had the best of both worlds. We could drive into the city in minutes to shop or eat out in York’s fantastic restaurants, and then escape back to our village.
Matt worked as a science teacher and I worked freelance at home editing scientific and medical publications. We both worked intensively during school terms, and it was not uncommon for me to still be at my desk at 3.00 am in the morning trying to meet an impossibly tight deadline.
Then, come school holidays, we would go off on walking holidays or city breaks to far-flung places around Europe and beyond, sometimes being away for several weeks in the summer. During those years, home was really just a place to work and a base.
More recently, and especially since Covid, we have traveled far less and instead explored the beautiful countryside around where we live. I became very interested in gardening and was happy to spend more time at home.
And we discovered that we were literally surrounded by wonderful gardens, parks and nature reserves that we had previously not realized existed. We loved our home and exploring the countryside around us, and feel so blessed to have lived here.
So why are we leaving?
When Matt bought our present house, and I moved in a couple of years later, our estate consisted of quite small houses in, by today’s standards, quite large gardens. Most were occupied by professional or retired couples. When Matt was at work I used love being in the garden listening to the birds and watching the bees and butterflies, and would often take my work and a mug of coffee outside.
Over the years, one by one, most of the houses have been extended so the estate now consists of larger houses in smaller gardens. Most are now occupied by families with at least two children and too many cars to park on the owners’ drives.
It’s not that there is anything particularly wrong with our neighbourhood. There is no obvious anti-social behaviour or disputes, and we wouldn’t be too worried if we forgot to lock our door. Many people consider it a highly desirable place to live and think how lucky we are.
But the ambience has definitely changed. The birds still sing, but now they are often drowned out by screeching kids or neighbours having exuberant barbecue parties. And sitting in the garden can be a risky business as you are likely to be hit by a stray football.
We no longer feel that we ‘fit in’ the way we used to. I am sure some of our neighbours see us as a boring old couple who never had kids and don’t have a life. (We are undoubtedly getting older and we chose not to have a family, but we are definitely not bored and love our lives, lol!)
The final straw came when our immediate long-term neighbours announced that they planned to move when they both retire in a couple of year’s time. Like us they are a quiet couple who love nature, their garden and their privacy. And like us they have no family ties. We have always got on really well and share plants and garden produce and nature notes.
We suddenly realized that if they moved out and were replaced with another young family we would feel even less at home. And we also realized that not only do we have no ties whatsoever, but we are getting older. And if we don’t move now, time will slip by in a blink and suddenly it will be too late.
So - where next?
When we started to think about where we would like to move to, we realized that we had a few major priorities.
We want to be surrounded by nature.
We want to hear birds singing rather than traffic or neighbours.
We want privacy and not to be overlooked.
I want space for a large vegetable garden.
Matt wants quiet country lanes for cycling routes.
We want access to coastal habitats, nature reserves and gardens to visit.
We want seclusion, but to still have easy access to facilities.
The size of garden we want, together with the degree of privacy we crave, would probably be out of our price range here in Yorkshire. And, to be honest, we feel it is time for a change - time to move on.
We are heading to Scotland - maybe…
An area we have visited many times over the years and are particularly fond of is Dumfries and Galloway in south west Scotland. We especially like the area that stretches west from Dumfries to around Newton Stewart, with Dalbeattie and Gatehouse of Fleet being particular favourites. This is the region we are focusing on in our search for a new home.
It is not the only area we are looking at. We have also considered Ayrshire, Argyll, Inverness, Berwickshire, Northumberland and even Mid Wales. But Dumfries and Galloway is the firm favourite, and unless a stunning house comes up in one of the other areas we think this is where we will settle.
Why Dumfries and Galloway?
Dumfries and Galloway is a beautiful, varied and often overlooked region of Scotland. Many tourists drive straight past as they head for the Highlands and Islands, and many don’t even realize it exists.
It has everything we love. Rolling green hills, forest parks and trails, beautifully clear rivers, scenic lochs, abundant wildlife, several gardens and nature reserves to visit. And it has the extensive Solway Coast, with everything from vast empty sandy beaches to estuarine mudflats and saltmarsh (here known as ‘merse’).
And house prices are significantly cheaper than Yorkshire.
After saying all that, finding the right home is definitely not easy. Most rural properties that have the land and surrounding nature we crave are either too large (5+ bedrooms for the two of us would be ridiculous) or too small (tiny traditional Galloway cottages with no space for an office or outbuildings). Hopefully the right house will come along soon, or we will find something to extend or renovate.
The shock of being ‘homeless’
The decision to move was made quite suddenly, and we certainly did not expect to sell our house within a week! Our buyers are not reliant on selling a property, and we told them that we would be able to move out quickly if they wished.
So, somewhat alarmingly, we now find ourselves packing frantically with nowhere to go! We thought it would be easy to rent somewhere while we searched for our new home, but it turns out that renting is not at all easy these days, with huge competition for every property that becomes available.
We may have to put our furniture and belongings into storage, and either rent or buy a static caravan while we continue our search. Whatever, we are determined not to panic and see it as a big adventure. Watch this space for updates!
I still have many wonderful places in Yorkshire to write about, and will try to get round to these as and when I can.
And do watch out for updates on our move - wherever we end up.
Leaving Yorkshire will undoubtedly be a wrench. But we will have a whole new world to explore, as well as a new house and garden to make our own. I am so looking forward to sharing the places we discover and the nature we find along the way.
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What an adventure. We did this ourselves in our late fifties and never looked back. Enjoy the ride and finding new parts of yourselves!
Good luck with the move Angie. When we sold our home in France in 2020, we rented just outside Dumfries, (Auldgirth just on the river Nith - loved your photo, a wonderful river) we were tempted to live in Dumfries and Galloway, for all the reasons you mention, it’s a spectacular place. We didn’t have a choice of places to rent, we were in France, Covid was in full swing, and literally no one would rent a property to us from a Scottish estate agency without us viewing it first! We found one property being managed by a Carlisle agent, whose owners lived in Spain and took it unseen! We just needed storage for all our stuff really. In the end it was Argyll that we fell for and have never regretted despite many challenges renovating a very tired house.