I'll let you into a secret...

 ...only it won't be a secret now, of course!  Recently, we'd given serious consideration to moving to Devon, and actually went to view a property there (it was the day we got held in stationary traffic on the M5 for several hours, as a result of a fatality on the motorway).  This is how it came about.

Much as we love living here, and we really do, we know it won't be possible to live here forever, for lots of practical reasons.  To cut a long story short, we'd had a lot of discussion about where we'd like to live, and what would be the best option for us for the future, bearing in mind we're not in a position to buy a place.  We have friends who live in a park home on a retirement park on the east coast...they love it, both the house (it's one of those so-called 'mobile' homes, double wide, which looks just like a modern bungalow), and the active social life on a lovely park full of like-minded friendly people, and close to a town.  That really appealed to us, both the lifestyle and living in a small friendly secure community.  Most of those park homes are owner occupied, I had no idea whether any have rentals, although I thought some might.  After extensive internet research I found a few, and sent off some emails.  Several replies said either they don't have any vacancies or they don't allow dogs (so no good!).

Then I had a reply from one park in North Somerset, who said that whilst they didn't have a vacancy on that park, they did have one at their sister park in mid Devon.  However....it wasn't one of their park home bungalows, but a two-storey cottage on the site, their suggestion was that we might like to consider renting the cottage until such time as one of their rental homes (they have several there) became available.  They'd apparently just totally refurbished the cottage following the departure of the previous residents (they'd moved out, not died!).

We love living here in Somerset, always have done - from the minute we moved down here 10 years ago I felt like I'd come home....I hadn't lived here before but it just felt so right.  So we hadn't really considered moving to another county...but the proposition was so intriguing we just had to go and have a look.

The cottage was gorgeous, built originally in the mid 1800s but extended and remodelled over the years, from once being a 2 up, 2 down it's now a large 4 bedroomed house, with lovely refitted kitchen and bathrooms, big range cooker, wood burning stove in a large stone fireplace in the huge lounge, master bedroom suite with big dressing room and an en suite shower room that's bigger than our bathroom.  Good size manageable tidy garden with a large patio and shed.  Separate garage too.  It was really lovely, but too big for us, and the rent was more than we could afford...although they said they were open to negotiation (we'd have had to negotiate quite hard though to get the rent down to an affordable level!).   

After a lot of discussion back at home, we decided it wasn't for us.  Whilst we do like that area of Devon - well, all Devon in fact - we don't really want to move out of Somerset, we have made so many good friends here for a start, and moving to Devon would make for a much longer journey to visit our close and extended family up in the Midlands.  Long drives wear husband out nowadays, he really doesn't like it anymore.  So we had to decline.  Pity, as the park was lovely as well as the cottage, and we got the impression that the park manager (who was a really nice man) was quite keen for us to move there, he said we were exactly the type of residents they like and was sure we'd fit in really well.  When I got back in touch to say we wouldn't be moving there, he said please ring him if we ever change our minds.  Nice of him.

So we shall continue to look, but only in Somerset.

(I have no idea why the font has changed and I can't seem to change it back, sorry about that!).