It's been a while since my last post, after our last house sit in Wales. Some of that time was spent negotiating offers on our house; at the time it looked like it was going nowhere, but once we returned home one offer firmed up (and moved to the right side of sensible!). Since then it's been the usual, painful process of solicitors, searches, surveys. When pretty much everything is now available online, I have no idea why it still takes 8 - 12 weeks to sell a house. Despite having first time buyers (so no 'chain pain') it seems to have been a long and torturous road. The good news is that contracts have been exchanged and a completion date agreed. We're pretty much up to date with the logistics of moving - funds in place, just about everything packed ready to go into storage (thanks to Cathy, who is amazingly organised when it comes to packing), address changes ready to go.
Our house purchase (a lovely bungalow on Anglesey) is running behind the curve, mainly delays at their solicitor's end, but also our tardy surveyor, who 'forgot' to book it in, so losing us about 3 weeks on the timeline. We'd planned on having a short air gap between selling and buying (listing our house as 'no onward chain' definitely helped), but we'll be living in Nido in the interim. This was fine when we hoped to sell the house in the summer, but as winter fast approaches, the days shorten and the wind and rain becomes more frequent, the thought of living in a 6m x 2m tin box for longer than a couple of weeks isn't so enamouring! With contracts signed (but nowhere near being exchanged), we don't need to stay too close to here, so could head off somewhere for a few days. But sod's law says as soon as we organise that, the bottlenecks will open up and it'll be time to move. We're leaving our car at Cathy's sisters and will aim to find CLs or CSs with hardstanding and electricity; we don't want to sink into soft ground and we do want to be warm and dry.
It's taken nine months to shift this house, much longer than we expected, but we're finally started to get excited about moving to the Isle of Anglesey. We'll be living about 3 miles from the coast and close to Newborough forest, beach and Llanddwyn island, one of our favourite spots. The new place is only 20 years old so we can move in without a major refit (a first for us!), aside from some decorating and extending the drive to fit the van. We're really looking forward to settling in, getting to know the local area and the wider island and finally starting the enjoy the benefits of early retirement; it feels like we've been in limbo for the past few months. So our planned winter trip to Spain and Portugal has been put on hold to allow us to move and get the house sorted, although we are planning to head south around March next year for about 3 months.
We're looking forward to the next chapter.....Moving On. We still can't quite get used to the idea that we'll be within walking distance of here:
