Gone West

By the third month of failing to sell our flat, we could no longer bear to Wait Till We Have A Buyer before house hunting. We reframed it as another Proof Of Concept experiment, to ascertain that a suitable property was readily available.

And within our price range, wasn’t it just. It became clear we could swap our three bedroom flat for a house with a swimming pool/a sauna/stables and a paddock/three acres of grounds with orchard and chicken coop. We could buy a medieval courthouse with original features (and no doubt medieval miscreants bricked up in the walls).

The trouble was, we had too much choice. Obviously, as Londoners, top of our criteria was Decent Broadband (which, you had probably guessed, reduced the list of potential properties by 90%). Obviously, as Londoners, we would get into a cold sweat if we weren’t able to return to the capital speedily at a moment’s notice, so a station close by was non negotiable. (This wasn’t so prohibitive as you might think: much of Dorset is close to the Waterloo line, much of Somerset to the Paddington line.)

Typical London property. Guide price: £87million

Our decision-making algorithm thus far felt a bit feeble. Shouldn't we be thinking about Acidity of Soil, or Dysfunctionality of Parish Council? I mentioned last time our friends who were now ensconced in an idyllic Dorset village (although we thought of it first, obviously); we were put to shame by the thoroughness of their research, which had involved hanging out in village pubs talking to locals, and perusing local authority development plans.

Whereas our approach to research went something like: 1) Open Rightmove, start searching “40 mile radius of Yeovil”, 2) put in maximum purchase price 3) increase maximum price by £50k on wife’s instructions 4) Have tense discussion about affordability (her response, “We’ll just make an offer 50k below asking price.”) 5) Increase maximum price by a passive aggressive £100k 6) Contemplate 300 properties whose broadband will now have to be researched 7) Think London isn’t that bad after all.

We couldn’t even decide between Dorset and Somerset. I started off assuming there were deep cultural differences between the two, but when you get into it, it boils down to people in Dorset are slightly better dressed and people in Somerset have slightly more tattoos. We had originally been focusing on Dorset, indulging the wife’s Thomas Hardy obsession; but might Somerset suit us? Only one way to find out: after five months of failing to sell the flat we decided to Escape to the Country and took a three month let on a rural Somerset cottage.

Typical West Country property. Guide price: 79p

The cottage was down a lane from Bruton, the place all Londoners live who aren’t in the Cotswolds. It’s where George Osborne and Stella MacCartney are neighbours (hang on, I’ve just had an idea for a sitcom). It has an art gallery and sourdough pizza emporium. It was the perfect location for two townies to test what it was like really living in the country.

Against all the odds, we did actually get into the whole rural bit. We hadn’t thought about this initially, but we realised how nice it was living in a cottage with nobody opposite. We added it eagerly to our list of criteria. Living on the outskirts of a village might suit us, bats and badgers notwithstanding. We started scouring the available properties again, and the second Dream House of the saga leaped out at us.

It was a former medieval bakery at the edge of a village in what marketing people like to call “the heart of Hardy Country” - back in Dorset. Tess of the D’Urbervilles visited the local market (yes, I know she didn’t actually exist, but please don’t spoil it for Helen). The house sprawled a lot, with interesting corners. It was huge. It had a footpath at the bottom of the garden which took you straight off into the fields (“Just imagine our dog’s little face when he sees that” suggested my visionary and anthropomorphic other half).

But you know of course where all this is heading. We wanted to buy this house, but we hadn’t sold our flat (six months and counting). The estate agents were polite but firm; they had obviously met enthusiastic Londoners before. Despite failing to secure our latest dream house, though, we had achieved a victory of sorts. We were really loving our temporary home in an isolated corner of Somerset, and we had established that dream houses existed in our price range. We just needed to sell the flat…