We bought what we call our ‘Weekend Country Retreat’ in 2010. While that description was true while we spent the next 6 years completely rebuilding the cottage internally, the retreat soon became our full time home in 2014 when we finally moved out of my own house.

The cottage is attached to just under 8 acres of pasture and moorland scrub. The local farmer was taking silage from about 4 acres worth of really nice pasture and he keeps all the walled banks under control with his hedge trimmer.

The cottage and surrounding plot have had a hard life over the years. It was used by one of the previous owners as a dumping ground for other peoples rubbish. We’ve found hundreds of tons of building rubble everywhere, and old transit van rear axle, even the remains of an AGA.

The roof was replaced sometime in the early 2000’s and a second hand glass conservatory and a two car garage, were attached the back and side and few years after that. Apart from that, very little had been done to it when we partially moved in in 2010.

We basically gutted each room and rebuilt it – one room at a time. To be honest if I had known then what I know now, I’m not sure I would ever had started something so ambitious. Now it’s finished, we are glad that I did, but it was a lot of work.

While my partner ran her own smallholding and a herd of cattle for a number of years before we met, I’m no Country Bumpkin. I’ve always loved being in the Countryside, but living ‘in it’ is something completely different.

Over the years I did add quite a few entries in our private blog. This has been a little disjointed and infrequent, so what I hope to do here is to document our journey of the time that we have been here.

I’d like to keep this section fairly freeform, so we can maybe include some foody and travel related subjects as well.