We're here!

Millpond-smooth water at Lodmoor, Weymouth, 8.30pm

As completion days go, yesterday was about as straightforward as it can get. Four of the previous day's lads reappeared with the two vans and they very swiftly packed up our remaining belongings. I set off ahead with a few bits in my car. There's not much you can fit into a Peugeot 107 but I made sure I had the kettle, mugs, tea and coffee and large quantities of bottled drinking water. On what was going to be the hottest day of the year so far we were all going to need lots of it. At 11.20, somewhere on the A31 near Ringwood, I pulled over to reply to a call from our solicitor and got the news we were hoping for: completion! At 11.30 there was another call so I pulled over again. It was the estate agents telling me I could pick up the keys. I arrived at their offices at about 12.30, picked up the keys and popped across to a beach-side café to get some lunch. Or so I thought. I imagined the two vans would be at least half an hour behind me but when I rang to check where they were they were only a few minutes behind. Back to the car, buying a sandwich from a corner shop first, then through Weymouth towards our house. At one of the junctions I could see the remvoals van approaching from the Dorchester direction.

At the house I opened up then popped across the road to borrow some buckets of water for the loo (The house had been completely drained down nearly a year ago so we didn't want to turn it back on without a plumber on hand) and made the first many introductions to neighbours to come.

The rest of the afternoon shot by and the lads were finished at around 5.30pm. Now we're here I can say thank you to Rainbow Removals from Wokingham who did an excellent job at very short notice. After they left Ian and I spent a while trying to find a few things we needed but we were virtual zombies by now, so we headed off to the Premier Inn near the beach at Lodmoor (see pic) where we'd booked to stay the night. When we got there we realised we'd left half the stuff we needed at the house so we booked in then turned around and went back. And then back again a few minutes later because I couldn't remember actually locking the door.

A quick five minutes looking at the sea and then into the Brewer's Fayre for dinner before collapsing into bed for what turned out to be a fairly good night's sleep, despite the heat. Still very tired this morning, but much more relaxed.

Are we nearly there yet?

I can't believe it's nearly over. The move, that is. After weeks of increasing angst suddenly it's the day before the move. At 8.30 this morning four strapping lads appeared with a large lorry to start packing up our belongings. Four hours later the foreman who'd recently finished another job appeared to help along with three more lads. In the meantime, Ian and I just kept well out of the way outside, moving our wooden bench around to follow the limited but welcome shade in our south-facing garden. It was so hot we only had one tea and coffee round to organise for the lads; the rest of the day they just kept helping themselves to tumblers of water. By 2.30pm the lorry was full and they left, with some of them due to come back on moving day with a smaller 7.5 ton truck to pack up the rest of the garage, garden plants, our clothes and the bed we'd slept in overnight. The rest of the afternoon was spent wiping down skirting boards, washing floors, vacuuming up dust and cobwebs from where our bookcases had been and generally making it as clean as possible for the house's new owner.

Outside, the goldfinches were making a lot of noise this morning, calling to each other with their distinctive high-pitched twitter, perhaps wondering where the food was that we normally leave out for them. But now in late afternoon it's quiet. I think they learn quickly and have found their free lunch elsewhere.

Despite weeks of rain, the garden that Ian and I spent years working on from scratch is looking lovely. Some plants have definitely suffered, some have even died, their roots suffocated in the wet soil, but others have flourished. There's a glorious yellow hybrid tea rose in the corner of the garden that catches the late afternoon sun, next to several sunflowers that are yet to flower but are already well over six feet tall.

But we have a new garden to tend from tomorrow: quite a different challenge, being very steep and terraced, with about four levels stepping up from the house. Onwards and upwards, as they say.

BACS: Bloomin' Awful Corporate Systems

Well! At the bottom of our relatively small chain the buyer of our buyer's house is moving to the UK from abroad and is being financed by his company, a large corporate organisation. We found out on Friday that they hadn't paid the deposit on Thursday, they'd paid the whole purchase price. By BACS! Three or possibly four days to wait until we knew the funds had definitely transferred. I even began to wonder if they might post-date the settlement date to be the completion date on Wednesday.

In the meantime, the thought of being stranded outside our old house surrounded by our belongings with no-one to move us forced us to commit to at least the deposit to book the removal company that we'd managed to find on Friday morning after about the fifth call around.

We spent a long weekend continuing to tidy up and sort out (mostly Ian) and tie up loose ends for work (me) in good faith that all would be well.

On Monday morning we had desperate calls and emails from our removal company for full commitment - and payment - so, by 9.30am, having not heard anything from the solicitors or estate agents we paid up the remaining £2000+ on the understanding that if it all went belly-up we'd lose it. Gulp. Well, at least we get 1% cashback on our credit card.

Finally, at around 12.30 we got the call we'd been hoping for. We have exchanged! At last.

Full steam ahead, then, for packing up tomorrow and moving on Wednesday. And we might even have decent weather for the it, too.

Oh @*&!$%!s!

My friends at Party Pieces

Thursday 19th July was, I believe, my last full working day actually at Party Pieces’ offices. From now on it will all be done remotely. It was an extremely long and busy day with two meetings (I don’t normally have any) and lots of farewell hugs at home time.

Just before the second meeting Ian rang. As we already knew, the deposit on the first property in our chain of three was being paid for, or lent to the purchaser by, his employers. For some inexplicable reason they were adamant that they wouldn’t pay it before this Thursday, just six days before the proposed completion date. By 2pm there was still no sign of the money and Ian rang with a proposal from down the chain that exchange of contracts went ahead on the basis of a promise that the deposit would be forthcoming. Reluctantly we agreed and Ian said he would then book the removals paying the extra £300 cancellation insurance just in case.

Several hours later when I got home, Ian said I might want to have a drink before he updated me further. My heart sank. After calling me earlier he’d decided not to go with the exchange without the deposits in place and told the solicitor to go ‘by the book’. Either way it makes no difference to the main issue… he couldn’t book anyone to do our removals. Oh dear. We really need a three-day move: one for (professional) packing, one for loading and moving and one contingency day. The three firms we’d had in to give quotes were now booked up to September! One company could possibly get personnel and transport from another depot but hadn’t called back. Another said they might be able to pack for us over the weekend or Monday and put everything in store until suitable transport is available to move it to Weymouth. It could be two or three weeks! In the meantime we would have to set aside the absolute minimum that we need to live with and I need to work, put it into a small storage unit before the completion date and then move it out again by car  in the days after completion. This was not how I envisaged using our deckchairs in our new home.

Stop press: On the phone this morning and have found someone who had a cancellation last night. We might, just might, be able to move in one go.

White-winged black tern

The Rodwell Trail, Weymouth.  Photo: Bob Ford

With unexpected extra time on our hands here in Berkshire we spent Saturday morning gazing at kitchen units in B&Q and fridge freezers in Comet, but there's not much more we can do until we're actually in our new house. In the afternoon it poured - again - so I spent several hours trying to work out how to add a cookie notice to my website that would disappear when someone clicked the 'agree and accept cookies' button. (I got there in the end).

On Sunday afternoon, after drinks and nibbles in the church hall after the morning service to say goodbye to our church friends, I browsed 'the net' looking variously for furniture shops, concert venues and outdoor activities in the Weymouth area. Running near to our intended new home is the Rodwell Trail  a former railway line, which ran from Weymouth Station to Portland and carried both passengers and the famous Portland stone (download a PDF of the walk route here from Visit Weymouth). I came across another website about north half of the trail - www.dorsetwalks.com/rodwelltrail/ - that includes lists of the wildlife that can be found on the trail and, for true enthusiasts, how many have been seen this year and whether they are earlier or later than last year's sightings. Currently online is a video of a white-winged black tern. Now I'm no bird expert, so I have to admit I hadn't heard of this one before. Perhaps it's a rare visitor, or maybe it's an unusual colour variant of a black tern. So I looked up the RSPB's website and found that the black tern has a black head and body and, depending on the time of year, grey wings on top and grey or white wings below. So I'm none the wiser, really. But Ian and I do like watching wildlife for its own sake, even if we don't always know what we're looking at so, with up to 60 species of birds and a similar number of plants and even more butterflies (though maybe not this year) and insects to keep an eye out for, I can see the Rodwell Trail becoming a regular haunt.

Patience is a virtue

The Olympic torch on its way to Weymouth (Facebook link)

Patience is a virtue, is it? Well, after the news on Tuesday I haven't been feeling at all virtuous. Apparently our buyer's buyer hadn't received their mortgage offer yet. Yesterday, though, we received a call from our estate agent with better news that was confirmed by our solicitor this morning: The mortgage offer had indeed been received; they'd only been waiting for written confirmation. Phew! We're off shortly to sign the Land Registry transfer deed ahead of exchange next Wednesday. This does mean, of course, that our planned completion date has been put back a week but we should, fingers crossed, still be in Weymouth just before the Olympics get underway.

That said, it's a strange feeling having had three leaving dos already with another one this Sunday, to remain here for week longer than anticipated. It doesn't feel right.

At the time of writing this it's not raining. If you're reading this in a year or more's time you might wonder why I should say that as 'not raining' isn't unusual for July. But April to June this year has been the wettest second quarter in the UK since records began in 1910 and half way through July the trend continues, or even worsens. The Olympic torch arrived in Weymouth yesterday and, quoting from the BBC torch relay page for 12th July "18:24 This is Peter Bryer who takes it in his stride as he battles the wind and rain. 18:40 The flame is now due to board a boat and go to Weymouth Beach. Katrina Hughes is the torchbearer here and is holding up despite the weather."

Oh no! What now?

When we received the offer on our house our buyer said that he needed to move by the end of July as his buyer was moving to the UK and the deadline was for visa reasons. Fine, we said, and proposed a completion date of Wednesday 25th July. (Tip: pick a mid-week date for completion so if you overrun you don't have weekends in the way). Later we discovered that the road we're moving to would have limited access from 26th July due to the Olympics so any delays might mean our removals van wouldn't be able to park on the road outside the house. We moved the proposed date to 18th July.

Days passed and various correspondence was sent and finally, on Tuesday 10th July we had an appointment with our solicitor for 9.30am to go and sign our sale and purchase contracts. We duly signed the contracts but that didn't mean that they we had now 'exchanged'. There were, apparently, some queries remaining on our purchaser's search. Our solicitor promised to make some calls and chase the other solicitor up. Straight after the meeting I had to zip off to PP for the rest of the day. I heard nothing from Ian so assumed that there was no further news.

'Any news?' I asked on my return home. 'Well,' replied Ian 'the solicitor rang and told us that our purchaser's purchaser hasn't had his mortgage offer yet.' Aaaaaargh. I am convinced my stomach dropped about three inches at that point.

Eight days to go. So near and yet so, so far.

Ten long days

Newton's Cove, Nothe Fort, Weymouth Harbour

Thank goodness for our lovely Queen’s Diamond Jubilee! There was so much to see and do over that very long weekend that in the end the last few days before our vendor’s solicitor was back in his office flew by. And, of course, our offer was accepted! Yay! Well, we had offered the asking price.

Next – straight on the phone to our solicitor to get the ball rolling on the legal procedures and to our estate agent so he could tell our buyer. Then more waiting, of course. We booked in another visit to our ‘new’ home and went down to Weymouth for the day on Saturday 9th June to have a more thorough look around. Fortunately it was pretty much as remembered and I took some video on my little Canon Powershot as I walked through the rooms.

We got to Weymouth quite early and had coffee in the Café Oasis on the beach at Overcombe at the north-east end of Weymouth Bay. I think we'll be back for a longer visit; the menu looks delicious and they have live music in the evenings. Lunch was delicious fish and chips in the Old Harbour Fish Bar (currently listed 19 out of 106 restaurants in Weymouth on Tripadvisor) near the harbour. Of note is that it offers gluten-free food with, presumably, wheat-free batter. It looks like it had been all spruced up recently, probably in anticipation of the influx of visitors for the Olympics as it is in a prime spot. Fish and chips. We will definitely have to watch out here! Lots of fish is great, but lots of chips? Hm. Later, we walked down to Newton’s Cove which is between Portland and Weymouth Harbours and had a coffee at a little café looking over the cove before walking around the peninsula that includes the Nothe Gardens and Nothe Fort. It was lovely. Can’t wait to get moved here! We just need everything relating to our chain of three properties to go smoothly.

He's on holiday

Sitting in church back home the next morning I was too distracted to concentrate and during the sermon (sorry, Maurice) my mind kept wandering back to Weymouth and Burton Bradstock. I felt like the rope in a tug-of-war with a house at either end. After lunch I told Ian that the only way I could be sure which house to go for was by scoring each marks out of five for price, condition, location, transport, garden, culture, broadband and mobile, shops, community and so on and then adding them up. I think I already knew what the outcome would be but I wanted to be sure that I had covered all bases and was using my head as well as my heart in the decision-making process. The winner, by quite a fair margin, was the wildcard, the Weymouth house. Ian agreed, although I think he’d already made up his min in his own way.

At about two minutes past nine the next morning I rang the estate agent to put in our offer. Aargh! They were all in their weekly staff meeting so I had to wait. There are times when I can be incredibly relaxed and patient; times when I can get completely absorbed in something and not notice where the time has gone. This was not one of them. A little while later the estate my call was returned and I put in our offer of the full asking price. More waiting. Two hours later she called back and said “I’m not getting anywhere with this”. “What?” I asked. “He’s on holiday this week”. The vendor was a solicitor acting on behalf his client and presumably had gone on holiday thinking that nothing much would happen while he was away except that by the time he came back the particulars for the house would be ready for him to sign off and the house could officially go on the market. So, not only did we have to wait a week for an answer, we actually had to wait until the following Wednesday as the weekend between was the Diamond Jubilee weekend with two public holidays on Monday and Tuesday. We then had to tell the other estate agent for the Burton Bradstock house that we couldn’t give them an answer for ten days either.

Ten days and we might have a new home or we might have to start looking all over again.

A spanner in the works

After a long and weary Friday viewing houses and having put in our offer on the Burton Bradstock property (see previous post) we went back to our guest house in Weymouth. A few minutes later my mobile rang. It was Christine, one of the estate agents we’d met earlier that day. She knew the property that she’d shown us earlier wasn’t for us and had gone back to her office wondering what else she could suggest. One of her colleagues asked ‘what about the house you went to see yesterday?’ It was a brand new instruction and Christine had only seen and valued it the day before. The house was empty and normally they wouldn’t let anyone see it so early in proceedings but she knew that we were returning to Reading the next day so called to offer us the chance to see it. The description sounded intriguing so we said yes, making an appointment to see it late the next afternoon.

In the morning we visited Abbotsbury Subtropical Gardens (HHA/Christie’s Garden of the Year 2012). What a lovely place it is and looking particularly good at this time of year (end of May) as most of the rhododendrons were in full bloom. A long steep walk at the south end of the garden brings you to the top of the cliff overlooking Chesil Beach with the famous Abbotsbury swannery in the foreground and Portland in the distance. After we'd finished admiring the gardens we drove off to Burton Bradstock and had another look around. (Hm, no Orange/Tmobile/Virgin signal to be had). We attempted to have lunch at the Hive Beach Café but you obviously need to get there early on a sunny Saturday lunchtime as there was a very long queue, so we drove on to Bridport and ate there. As we were near the agent for the Burton Bradstock property we popped in to see if there was any news. There wasn’t.

So, back to Weymouth for our appointment to view the latest house in our quest. It was a fairly modern house towards end of a cul-de-sac in the Rodwell district of Weymouth. From upstairs you can see a bit of the beach on Weymouth Bay to the front and Portland Harbour and Portland Island to the rear. It has all the space we need, is in a quiet location yet just five minutes’ walk to the sea, ten minutes’ walk to Weymouth Harbour and just a little further to the shops.

And, whilst it needs quite a bit of updating, mostly cosmetic, it was well under budget. We also liked it a lot.

Time to head home to Reading. As we joined the new road – built due to the coming to Weymouth of the 2012 Olympic sailing events (more of that later) – Ian’s mobile rang. It was the estate agent of the Burton Bradstock house. Not surprisingly really, but our offer had been rejected. They’d had another higher offer but we were, however, the favoured buyers as our own home was already under offer and we wanted to move quickly. Would we consider increasing our offer? It was now late on Saturday afternoon and the estate agents would be closed on Sunday so we said we'd call back on Monday.

Oh dear. We really didn't think we would have to choose between two houses. Time for more serious thinking.

Burton Bradstock

The beach at Burton Bradstock

For some time we had been keeping an eye on a property on Prime Location in Burton Bradstock (BB) but it was about £35k over our budget. After our trip to Dorchester (see previous post) we arranged to go back to Dorset the following Thursday and arranged a tight schedule of seven properties to see in Weymouth on the Friday. While Ian was making the appointments I noticed that the house in BB had reduced in price by about £15k so we added it to our list, making an appointment to see it late on the Thursday afternoon.

The house is situated on the very edge of the village, on a quiet cul-de-sac within a few metres of open farmland yet just two miles from the busy market town of Bridport and just over a mile to the sea at the westerly end (or beginning, depending on how you look at it) of Chesil Beach. The village itself is a very pretty ‘olde worlde’ kind of place with two pubs, a lovely (and very active) old church, village shop, post office, a summer concert series and even a library (see their website). Everything we were hoping to find, in fact. The house itself had everything we were looking for, including an office, but needs a lot of updating, particularly the tiny kitchen. And it was still over budget. Oh dear.

After a disturbed night when I dreamt that the BB house had been snatched from under our noses before we had a chance to do anything about it we spent a very busy day viewing the other properties: a large Victorian villa with the potential to be an amazing house had we the energy to do it up (we don’t, but someone will), a small cottage right next to a pretty stream with a first floor balcony overlooking meadows, both just north of Weymouth, two relatively modern houses in Wyke Regis, a huge Georgian terraced house in need of lots of TLC, and a chalet-style smaller house in the village of Preston, to the east of Weymouth, with views over the bay. The seventh viewing was cancelled as they’d received and accepted an offer the day before.

By 5pm we’d finished and retired to the bar at Weymouth Pavilion for a drink and a review. One by one we went through the pros and cons of each property whilst all the while in my head I was shouting “Burton Bradstock! Burton Bradstock.” At 5.20pm we’d finished and Ian admitted that the house in BB was his preferred choice too. We decided to ring the estate agent to make an offer. A rather cheeky one, it has to be said and well under the asking price as it was quite a lot over budget and we’d have to spend at least £20k doing it up.

We put in our offer but as luck would have it the agent dealing with that property wasn’t available so we would have to wait until the next day at least for an answer.

Time to get back to our guest house (The Harbour Lights where we've stayed before and been very comfortable) and put our feet up before going out again to eat.

The Stepford Wives

After our trip to Yeovil we decided to wait until we'd had an offer on our house before we started looking in earnest. We'd hate to find something we loved only for it to be snapped up before we were in a position to make an offer.

The day after accepting the offer on our house we drove down to the Dorchester area to look at three properties that on paper at least – or actually online – looked just right. The first was in a little village set against a very steep hill with lovely views across a valley. But it was really too remote, being down very narrow lanes and the layout didn’t quite work for us. Finding out that there was barely a 1mb broadband connection was the final decider.

Next we went to see two houses in a modern purpose-built village about five miles north of Dorchester. The first house was at the north edge of the village and, standing outside, all we could hear was the breeze rustling in the trees and the birds twittering in the bushes. Peace and quiet. Lovely! The other house was on the far side of the village and had the same layout, although with a slightly larger garden, and was almost as peaceful.

We walked back through the village to the centre where there is one shop-cum-Post Office and a village hall. The whole village is incredibly tidy with beautifully manicured lawns and neat front gardens. It was a Saturday morning and there weren’t any children to be seen (or heard) except for a few very young ones in a small playground with their parents. It was quiet. Too quiet. In fact, it reminded me of the 1975 film The Stepford Wives and I expected to see identically dressed women to come out and start synchronised grass mowing (like one of the BBC ads). Ian reminded me that when we'd driven through here a few months ago (without stopping) I'd said I didn't like it and that I thought it was weird. I'm sure those who live there love it, but it's definitely not for me!

The rest of the afternoon we explored the other villages around Dorchester before returning home by which time we had both decided: Weymouth would be our next and final stop. Perhaps. Maybe…

A visit to Yeovil

When we put our house on the market we started making a short-list of properties we’d seen on the Right Move, Zoopla and Prime Location websites.

Silver Street, South Petherton (Steve Doble)

Back in April we went down to Yeovil (Somerset) for our first actual viewings. The district was one of our preferred areas and it looked like we would get more for our money there than in Dorset. We saw three houses but unfortunately one just wasn’t suitable and the other two, although in lovely village locations and ticking all the right boxes property-wise were within earshot of the constantly busy A303. Six years ago we had moved from Lower Earley to Shinfield to get away from the swish of the M4 and I didn’t want to move anywhere with the same kind of noise.

We also had a look around South Petherton – recently voted one of the top places for a family to live – and other nearby villages. South Petherton is a lovely little town with plenty going on and gives the impression of having a really good community spirit. The countryside around there is really lovely and Yeovil itself would make a really good 'main' town with plenty of shops, theatre and concerts and good transport links, too. Sadly, there was nothing else suitable property-wise.

Once again, though, we were being drawn back down south to Dorchester, Weymouth and the sea. We were getting closer to finding our new neighbourhood, if not our actual home. But time was running out.