Moving to the country

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 Charwelton.  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!).