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.