Seventeen years ago this week I fell in love with my house. After a very protracted moving process during which my chain free, mortgage free, in a hurry  buyer turned out to be none of those things, six months later, I moved in. It has been an honour to be the custodian of such a special property but for various reasons, none of which are connected to the house or the wonderful friendly village in which I live, it is time to go.

What will I miss most? The garden, the woodburner, the privilege of living in a cottage that is almost certainly four hundred years old and belonging to a community. I will miss waking up to the sound of birdsong and occasionally sheep baa-ing but it is time for the next phase of my life.

My house is on the market – if anyone wants a seventeenth century cottage in north Devon, complete with a documented house history back to 1750, now is the time to say. It is in the centre of a village, yet intriguingly hidden away, it is quirky, it is home. I’ve lavished time, effort, love and a significant amount of money on it since I have been here. It might have been my rest of my life home but I have decided otherwise. It is a weird feeling. Mentally I have had to move on but I am still here and may be here for some time, waiting for that special person who will also fall in love with this unique property. I am trying to put the whole horrendous process that is moving home in the UK to the back of my mind, whilst making sure the house is looking its best and obsessively checking Rightmove to see what is currently top of my to buy list for when that right person comes along.

As I am giving up such a lovely place I need my new home to be special too, so I need to find something I will love but not fall in love with it quite yet, in case someone else buys it before I can, or I am gazzumped. I need to think about what I might get rid of before I move but not yet, as I don’t know what I might need or have room for. So there’s an awful lot of ‘not yet’ and even more trying to convince myself that what is meant to happen will happen and everything happens, or doesn’t happen, for a reason. This is, of course, interspersed with raised stress levels and convincing myself to stop mentally redecorating the current favourite to buy property.

Much as I don’t want to wish my life away, it would be good to just jump to moving in day in a few months (please don’t let it be years) time. Oh, to save you asking, I won’t be going far.

Photo credit Harding and co