Why and where and when

We live in a seventeenth century farmhouse up a steep hill.   There is a holiday cottage and nearly two acres of land which we have painstakingly attempted to turn from a field into a garden.  Is this a beautiful and interesting place to live?  Yes.  When the sun shines on a day in May it is hard to understand why anyone would want to be anywhere else.  But it is a place with a lot of work and in some ways a challenging place to live.  My brother has never been since his stroke.  My father could not come when he was no longer able to walk.  When Eric lost his legs, his phrase for not being able to walk any more, we struggled.  There are cobbles and gravel and changes of level outside.  There are steps and sloping floors inside.  We are fine here now but we might not be fine if either of us was unwell in any way and we probably won't be fine in a few years with less energy.  It has been the most fabulous adventure but it is, or perhaps more accurately right now, it will be TOO Much.

So that is the drive for us both I think but for me in particular to think about how to make the next stage of life work and how to make it interesting and even exciting.  Building a house, or more accurately having it built, now that is interesting.  Last summer taking an idling drive with a very pregnant Emma after a pub meal out we drove past a building plot on the edge of a village on the other side of the Clwydian hills.  It is not far at all as the crow flies but down in the vale where the land is flat and the soil is rich and generous.  The plot is the side garden of an old house.  It is the very end of the village with fields beyond it and a view from the north east corner towards the hills and Moel Arthur, the hillfort which is the centre of our view from here, our present house.

We went to look.  We met a couple of architects.  We talked and thought.  We knew we could afford to buy the plot, just about, by raiding my pension fund but then we would be unable to build anything unless we sold our present house.  So we made an offer, had it accepted and then spent nearly eight months slowly and painfully moving through the process of buying it.

On the 4th May 2018 we completed on it.  Now it is ours and there are things we need to do even though our house is not sold.  We have agreed to fence the plot down the shared boundary with the old house next door and to sort out the alterations to the front of the plot which will meet the requirements of the planners in respect of access.

Looking towards the road from the back of the plot with the large lime to the right hand corner

Looking towards the entrance with the outbuildings of the neighbouring house on the left

Looking across the boundary towards the hills
So much to do.

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