- Mar 4, 2018
- 3 min read

Escaping To The Country

I'm writing this blog totally exhausted after having tidied up the outside of the cottage, stacked the surprise load of logs the Forester dropped off, cleaned the log burner out and brushed down the little covered area we have at the back of the cottage. Totally exhausted, but I wouldn't have it any other way.

As most of you know we moved out of London at the end of January. We lived in a lovely 2 bed garden flat in Kew and life was pretty good, however we found ourselves becoming more and more overwhelmed by the go go go attitude of those around us and it started to rub off. I found myself unable to truly relax at the weekends and in the end we realised that it was probably time to start keeping an eye on Rightmove.

With only a week to go before Christmas we stumbled across a fairytale cottage in the woods, just out of London on a National Trust estate. It was one of those too good to be true kind of moments. We viewed the cottage and were totally blown away, after rushing home and completing our application, we spent the next few days wondering if we could actually be so lucky to be chosen to become the next custodians of a listed cottage with such historic importance. It's fair to say Christmas was our most stressful to date, wondering and waiting to hear back from The Trust.

Buuuutttt as you all know they chose us! We couldn't be happier!

As some of you may be aware, it hasn't been totally plain sailing, we moved in with no white goods, no aerial for the TV, very little oil in the tank to heat the cottage which had sat empty for quite a while, and I'm only able to write this blog piece as almost 2 months in, we finally have wifi!

Our first few weekends in the cottage were spent running back to the old flat trying to tidy it up to make sure we got our hefty deposit back, which thank God we did. Then a few weekends spent in the cottage trying to make sense of all our stuff... I don't understand how we have so much stuff. Finally we're in and settled and life is a little less chaotic, and we are starting to realise that moving to our little cottage in the woods has 100% been the right decision for us. This last weekend we were snowed in by The Beast from the East and Storm Emma and we had literally nothing we needed to do, so we pulled on our wellies and for the first time we had a wander round the estate. 2 hours and 4 miles later ,we were totally exhausted but truly the happiest and most relaxed we have been in such a long time.

I honestly can't wait to get back in to blogging and sharing the highs and the lows of living in our little cottage in the woods.

Lastly, I wanted to thank you all so much for all the lovely comments and messages over the last few months, I'm so honoured to have such amazing and supportive followers.