Moving to the country

Okay. You see, this is why I had to stop shopping for places to live when I’m not actually in the market for renting a place for another 6 months. I keep finding totally amazing houses. At least I think they are until I see the next one.

As I said, I have officially stopped looking, but I was just writing up a well overdue blogpost about our first Recce and I happened to be fiddling around on the Globrix website when I accidentally clicked on this little beauty. I just love the description of the locality: “middle of nowhere”. Perfect. And its true – check out the map.

Funnily enough this looks like it is less than a mile from where we went walking on our 2nd recce the other weekend. The nearest village seems to be Wormleighton which is where we parked the car.

Let’s just hope we find something as good as this available in 6 months time.

On our second recce of the area (I have yet to write up the first 1st Recce here) we went window shopping for rental properties. I don’t mean we went looking in the windows of estate agents. We actually went looking in the windows of houses which we’d seen advertised in the area on the Globrix website.  We also made the most of a day out in the countryside by taking a short walk and sampling the local ales and food.

Since we don’t have a car (yet!), my parents offered to drive us out to the Banbury area to have a sniff around. They’re curious to see where we might be moving to and they also enjoy country walks and pub lunches

I found a fairly easy 4 mile walk on the Ordnance Survey website in the right area – a circular route between the villages of Wormleighton and Priors Hardwick – on the south-eastern edge of Warwickshire.

The drive up from my parents house in Ealing took about an hour and 15 minutes and it was drizzling most of the way. Happily it was starting to brighten up by the time we were ready for our walk.

We parked the car in Wormleighton, a beautiful old village with a church that still has parts which were built in the 1200s – and set off on our walk.  The sun came out and helped keep us warm. The walk took us through some very soft, clingy-soil fields which stuck to our boots so much we could barely lift our feet up. Much hilarity ensued.

A large part of the route took us along the Oxford Canal, which was partly iced over. According to the couple on a narrow boat moored up who stopped us to ask for a weather report (did they not have a radio?!), driving the boat through ice should be avoided at all costs. This didn’t seem to bother the drivers of the other 2 boats which passed them by.  I think they were just enjoying the tranquility of that little spot.

On our way back to the car through the last field we caught up with some local (dog) walkers. They mentioned a couple pubs we could try for lunch (one we’d scoped out already) and were very enthusiastic about the area when we told them we were thinking about moving there.  The first pub we tried in Lower Boddington wasn’t serving food because the chef was ill, so we headed back up to the Hollybush in Priors Marston which we’d driven by earlier.

After a very satisfying sunday roast and pint of Hooky Bitter we got back in the car to go an have a look at a couple houses I’d spotted on Globrix. Globrix is like the Find-a-property website particularly designed for the countryside, because it lets you browse by map, which is vitally important (at least to us). I’d started looking on another website, by location, for ‘places near Banbury’ but then I’d have to sift through all the places actually in or near the town, which we’re not interested in. But with searching by map, I can just move around the map area between the towns to find the more rural/small village locations.

The first place we looked at was a lovely old semi-detached cottage in Charwelston.  Nice converted loft with sky lights, garden and old style finished kitchen. My only hesitation with it would be that it was surrounded by houses on all sides – it just felt a bit ‘built up’.

The second one we looked at was a less ‘characterful’, modern house, but in what looked like -and turned out to be- a perfect location.  It is right on the edge of the village of Upper Boddington overlooking animal grazing fields. It’s a detached house with gardens on 3 sides and the driveway on the fourth.  It was pretty basic looking inside but I think I’d be too busy looking out the windows (facing out in 2 different directions in most rooms in the house) to worry about the interior design!

I have to say shopping for houses in the country is so much more fun than in the city. You can’t go peering into windows of potential flats in London (a) because you don’t know which house/flat/building it is until you’ve arranged to see it with the estate agent and (b) because its rarely going to have one (let alone 3) window(s) accessible to the street/public.  In the country they tell you what street it is and give you a photo and you know exactly which one it is because they all look a bit different (and there aren’t that many on the street!).

During the Christmas holidays we did our first recce of the area we are thinking of moving to.

Sidenote: We are not actually going to be moving to the country until August/September 2010, but because it is such a big move for us we wanted to find out a bit more about what we’re getting ourselves into ahead of time. And we’re going to be away the 3 months immediately before we plan to move, so we can’t do any visits then.

So yes, we went to stay with Ben and Jen and their families in Leicestershire, to avoid sitting at home listening to our noisy neighbour’s music blaring have a little holiday. One night we all went to stay with James and Zara who, as I mentioned, live[d - they've since moved] near Banbury. The next day on our way home we took the Yellow Van Tour through the area east of Banbury and the M40, starting in Kings Sutton (which is just over the border from Oxfordshire in South Northants) and heading north.

We meandered along through the villages with names we sometimes couldn’t pronounce and which we usually found something to chuckle about – Chacombe (“Chav-comb!”), Farthlinghoe, Middleton Cheney, Thorpe Mandeville and Sulgrave. We called out the good and bad points as we saw them. “Pub? Check!”, “Shop? Check!”, “Some nice old stone houses? Yup!”, “Small village (not verging on a town)? We’ll take it!” Those ones got marked with a big tick on our road map, for reference later in case we hear of a place for rent in one of these villages. After we passed-by the beautiful Canons Ashby Priory we decided to stop for hot chocolate.

I was hoping to take us to look at a house that we’d seen was up for rent in Lower Boddington but I couldn’t remember the street name. (It was still listed in February though so we checked it out on our 2nd Recce. ) Instead we carried on up to the villages on and to the north of the A361: Byfield, Charwelton, Priors Marston and the Boddingtons (Upper and Lower – no relation to the beer) some of which are in Warwickshire, others still in Northamptonshire.

What impressed us about all the villages in this area were that they were really quite pretty – lots of houses with that beautiful yellow Cotswold stone. Others were built in local ironstone. The bonus here (in Northants) is that you get this without paying the markup for being in an “Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty” (which the Cotswolds is, don’t you know).

Rock on.

Moving the country is a big step. At least that’s what we are assuming. For one thing, it’s another move. And the thought of actually physically moving flats makes us both feel a bit sick. Then factor in a move out of the city to somewhere we don’t know. At this prospect we feel faint. We need to sit down.

But it’s ok, it’ll be fine. All we need is a plan. In fact, making a plan presents us with an opportunity. Because thinking about it, if we are going to pack up everthing we own, and disrupt our lives and livelihood, I want to get more out of it than just to move. In fact, this is the perfect chance to take a long trip. Out of the germ of this idea the following plan has evolved: Instead of just moving our stuff from one house to another, we will put it all in storage, and we will decamp to North America for a few months before coming back and resuming the Move to the Country.

There are several reasons that this makes sense for us to do. We have many friends and family in Canada and the States who we miss and only see very occasionally. Also, I have a long-standing collaborative art practice with my friend Duncan, who is based in Chicago. Last year, we did a 6-week residency at the Banff Centre during which we started a new scuptural project. We also realised that working together in the same physical space is crucial to our continuing progress as an artistic endeavor. So spending a good few weeks in Chicago to finish the piece and do some general R&D. So.

None of this seemed terribly real until just last week. But that was when we decided to commit to all this, and buy our plane tickets. So we settled on dates, and we purchased TICKETS. Now there is no backing out, and we also have a set date to work around. And whenever i’ve had this sort of solid deadline in past, a deadline so big you end up subordinating all manner of lesser deadlines to it (some out of necessity, some out of expediency), I lay out my time like this:

I will post images of it periodically as the plan further concretises.

Talking with Ben, Jen and Clio last weekend we came up with a few things we miss about the country. I might add to this, but here it is so far:

• Proper darkness and seeing stars
• Quiet/sounds of the countryside
• Horizon
• Skies
• Vastness
• Time (*)

*Obviously they don’t have more hours in the day in the countryside, but there you definitely get the sense that you have more time there. Perhaps because things take more time to do–as Clio said “it takes longer to look out the window”–we have to slow down to allow for this. Also Ben–who comes from rural Leicestershire–clarified this point saying “I don’t get as stressed out about time passing when I’m in [the countryside]“

The first thing everyone asked when we started floating the idea of moving out of London is “where are you going to go?”. When we decided to make the move we didn’t really know, but we agreed on one limitation. It needs to be within a couple hours travel time to London, so that we can still get in for meetings and seeing friends and my family. Then we started talking to our friends Ben and Jen who also live in Hackney but have always said they wouldn’t stay (in London) forever. They couldn’t let us go and leave them behind in the concrete jungle so we started talking about all trying to move out at the same time and to the same area. So we threw down the points on a map which between us we wanted to be able to get to relatively easily and realised we needed to move out of London in a north-westerly direction. Coincidentally, Jen’s friends James and Zara are living in Banbury, which is in that general direction, so we agreed this might be a good place to start looking.

View Triangle of influences in a larger map

We have lived in London for over 6 years. Tottenham, Dalston, Upper and Lower Clapton have all been home. Somehow, up until now, living in the city has been satisfying, stimulating and imminently survivable. Despite the fact that we’ve moved 4 times in the 6 years, that I’ve moved studio 3 times (twice having been moved on due to the ongoing development blitz that is East London), that jobs have come and gone, that we have lived submerged in the noise and swirling grime of the city, we have enjoyed our time here. Until very recently.

A combination of problems with neighbours, noise, rent prices (not to mention the seeming impossibility of getting a mortgage for a decent flat or house in this area) has finally made us aware of the impact life in the city is having on us. We’d talked idly about moving to the country for years, as is our duty being Londoners. Suddenly, it occured to us that this flippant fantasy could be a reality! After all, we run a design agency focusing on web – we can do our work from anywhere, and we already work with international clients. They wouldn’t even know the difference. And we could actually afford to live somewhere with a garden!!! This was beginning to sound rather desirable.

So in a moment of spontaneous life-changing-decision-making, we resolved to simply leave. Of course, there are many stories out there of failed escapes such as the one we’re planning. To be fair, it might be a disaster, and we may be back in town a few months down the line with collective tail between our legs. But we’re going to give it a try, and we will use this blog to document the process. Please check back when you can for updates on our progress.