The first week in Wales

We arrived at our new home about 7.30pm on Thursday 29th June after a clear run A10, M25 and M4.  It had been a busy day at the end of a hectic week of packing and attempts to untangle ourselves from our 9 to 5 Hertfordshire lifestyle.  Our four dogs had been crammed into our newly acquired SUV along with camping beds, camping chairs, duvets, some food and bare essentials to get us through the 3/4 days before our belongings arrived at our long house in the Cambrian Mountains.

On arrival at the property on a warm summer evening we were in awe of the size of the place.  It seemed bigger than we remembered both inside and out.  There was a slight smell of damp mixed with unfamiliar smells including a wet grass smell in the sunroom akin to hemp/weed.  We had high hopes for the dehumidifier we bought before leaving England (but currently on a lorry in Swansea) that this would help eliminate these odours.

The first few days were amazing and overwhelming.  The sheer size of the task ahead gave us both wobbles of confidence despite reassuring each other that we didn’t need to do everything at once and we had earnt a week or two holiday/assessment time.  The urge to rip out all the old decor, curtains, skim the artex ceilings and decorate was hard to suppress but the practical head won out as maintenance works such as pointing the chimney and roof repairs had priority.

We spent a frustrating time without a phone line and Internet sitting in supermarket car parks in the nearby town trying to move out of one Council and register with another on our mobiles. We made no progress with our bank online or on the phone as both required access to numbers and passwords within their own software but walked into the local bank branch and in 5 minutes managed to close down our redundant offset savings account (as we had no mortgage now) and change our address by speaking to the cashier.  We enjoyed the personal touch it seemed fitting to our new lifestyle. Over the course of the next few days we found ourselves getting excited when we saw the 3G symbol on our phones but then struggling to find things to do on the Internet.  Had the process of unplugging from the matrix begun?

During this initial time at the smallholding, we met our next door neighbour, a sheep farmer, and his son one morning as we were walking our dogs.  They explained that they had one more day of sheering and that the land surrounding our property was owned by a farmer who lived in Aberystwyth.  Meeting the neighbours and establishing that one neighbour had Highland cattle and would happily swap pork for beef and the nearest neighbour was willing to swap lambs, made us think again about getting some weaners.  It is very exciting.

July 9th, 2017