In this weeks early retirement blog we think that we may have finally banished that Sunday night work feeling, we make a bit more progress in purchasing our dream home in the Yorkshire Dales and we have a number of knock-on experiences from the changing of the seasons.
That Sunday feeling
This week that we finally realised that we no longer had that Sunday night feeling…without us even realising, that anxiety filled feeling was no longer part of our lives. We were sat in the drizzly mist on the shores of Loch Etive, beside an open fire, listening to the stags roar across the Glen as the light faded and only then did we realised it was actually a Sunday night. It was a shocking feeling that took us both by surprise.
We reflected on how different this was compared to our working lives. We used to both hate and dread Sunday nights coming around…but only now are we starting to realise the full extent of how much it truly effected us. It was an ever-present stress in our lives, but we never spoke about it, never acknowledged it, or took time to reflect on how much of an impact it actually was having on our lives.
House visit and progress at last...
We were both so excited to spend some time at our new house on Tuesday planning out and talking through ideas for when it is finally ours. Our solicitors are now seemingly working really hard to push the other side towards a completion date, and we can actually start to feel it getting closer and more real.
Being in the house didn’t illicit any feelings of fear or dread- just genuine excitement for the future. We have sooooo many ideas how to make it our dream home, we just need to start making those ideas a reality. We know that we are potentially going to be squatting in a building site for a good few months, but that is really exciting. As Jackie pointed out, as students we lived in some absolute s**t holes, and this is way better than many of those houses were already. The adventure of camping in the house will just be a little different to our travel adventures!
We have arranged to meet an architect at the house next week to get some ideas and plans for what is possible. This is so exciting!!! We have never been in a position with our previous houses to truly make it our own. There has always had to be an element of compromise with some aspect of each property. This time, we are hoping that we can really bespoke the house to what we really want, with as few compromises as possible. Any compromises will be fully in our control.
The prospect of living in this part of the world, in a beautiful house that we have created for ourselves is more exciting than words can express.
The joys of self storage
After a particularly wet week in the hills of Scotland we realised that we needed to break out our winter walking kit sooner rather than later. The issue was that we really did need to break out our kit...from the self storage lockup where all our worldly possessions are currently kept. We are not sure if it was a good omen or not, but when we were packing our stuff away, we clearly made the decision to put our winter gear away as we would be in the house before the seasons changed!!! Little did we know how slow the legal system works!
We knew exactly where the kit was located- in the blanket box. What we didn't know was where in the lockup was the blanket box! Our initial search was a miserable fail, so much so we were questioning if we had actually stored the box away...right up until Jackie had a final deep crawl through the stacked locker to find a minuscule glimpse of the box, right in the far corner of the locker, under a stack of approximately 10 other boxes!
We just love living out of a storage locker! We started the long process of digging out the box, slowly emptying most of the locker in the process. After about 20 minutes of unpacking, we were there- safely in possession of walking boots, waterproofs, hats, gloves, ice spikes...the full works. We are now officially ready for any weather the mountains can throw at us. All we needed to then do was repack the storage locker again, and our life was complete!
The moral of this story- think very carefully about the order of packing if you are going to use self storage facilities.
Weather…what weather?
It is fair to say that we have never had so much rain as we have had over the course of this week. We had a couple of stormy nights at Glen Coe and Glen Etive, but there were still small windows where we could get out and about. As we headed south it started to rain, and didn’t stop for a good 48 hours. We spent a lovely, yet wet 24 hour camp at Loch Lomond, hoping that it would pass us by…it didn’t! We then made the long run home to Yorkshire, hoping that God’s own Country would treat us better…it didn’t- we spent another 24 hours in a very wet and dank Skipton. As we move beyond the 48 hour period at the time of writing, things don’t look good as another 24 hours of rain is predicted! We would go back to our house…but wait…we don’t have a house at the moment…
Autumn harvest
We have enjoyed a few days this week back at Jackie’s mums house, doing all the day-to-day tasks that still keep mounting up. Simply giving up our jobs and early retiring does not make these mundane tasks, like getting the car MOT’d, go away- they all still have to be done.
On a more positive note, we both really enjoyed helping in the allotment to gather in the final crop of apples. I am not a gardener, and never have been, but there was such a lovely wholesome feeling of picking and collecting fresh produce. This year has been a bumper fruit harvest and it is great to get an insight into all the different ways the fruit and veg can be preserved- really worryingly, I am developing an unexplainable interest in how different pickles and chutneys are made…something I never thought I would ever find myself saying. Is this part of the early retirement evolution of man?
So that's the end of another week of fun filled early retirement adventures. We fully intend next week to harrass the solicitors within an inch of their lives to get things to complete with our house purchase. As I type this, we are starting to pack up and head off for a week (or more) in the Lake District, to bag some Wainwright's and find more hidden places.
Have a brilliant week,
Richard & Jackie
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