For the past 2-3 months, we’ve been sharing everything that we got up to during our trip to Scotland with our friends (see the first post in that series here, with all other related posts at the end of that one). Writing about that trip took longer than I expected as we managed to cram so much fun stuff into the trip.
Just before that, I’d written about our first two weeks living in the UK. At the time, we were still looking for somewhere to live, with the entirety of the UK open to us. That had made it hard to narrow things down, but we’d assumed we’d end up living up north due to the lower cost of living.
Well, a week or two after writing that we found somewhere to live!
Shae, Truffles and I moved in at the beginning of June and have been busy getting settled. Here’s more about our new life.
Our Apartment
One of our main requirements when looking for an apartment was that it be fully furnished. We’re not sure how long we plan to stay in England, so we didn’t want to spend tons of money on new furniture, only to head back to the US sooner than perhaps anticipated.
In the US, people tend to use Zillow when buying a home and Apartments.com when looking for somewhere to rent. In the UK, the main site for both options is Rightmove.co.uk. We’d therefore focused most of our searches there, but Shae ended up finding an interesting-looking property on a different site called OnTheMarket.com.
We’d also found several other potential places in the north of England, so we took what was meant to be a week-long road trip up north in order to view a bunch of properties. The house Shae found on OnTheMarket.com was the second property we looked at and we immediately decided it was the place for us, so we cut our week-long road trip short as there was no need to visit other cities and view apartments there.
It was perfect for what we were looking for. It’s a two bedroom, two bathroom stone building; there are four apartments spread out across this large converted complex which were once vacation rentals.
One of its best features is the massive (by British standards) kitchen which you enter into from the front door.
As you can see, it has a tall ceiling with authentic wooden beams. There are lots of kitchen cabinets, with a washing machine (it’s very common in the UK for the washing machine to be in the kitchen). The floor is made of stone which has been lovely in the summer as it stays nice and cool; we’ll see how we feel about that when winter comes around!
What particularly sold it for me was that it has a dishwasher. That’s not as common in kitchens in the UK as it is in the US because kitchens here tend to be smaller, so there’s limited space for one. I hate washing dishes by hand, so a dishwasher was on my very, very short list of must-haves. Really, a dishwasher was my only must-have!
At the other end of the kitchen was a large six-seater dining table, along with a full-sized fridge-freezer. Again, that’s something else that’s less common in UK kitchens due to size constraints, so I was overjoyed to have more fridge and freezer space than I’d originally anticipated.
We’ve since shifted things around a little, so the fridge-freezer is now where the dining table was and the dining table is just to the left of where I was standing to take this picture. We did this because the fridge-freezer had been in front of the back door, so we moved that in order to be able to open that door too and get a cross-breeze in the summer.
The kitchen leads through to a small hallway. There are stairs leading up to the right, with three other doors leading off from there.
It’s an upside-down house of sorts because the bedrooms and bathrooms are downstairs, while the living room is upstairs. Here’s the master bedroom.
When we moved in, there was an additional single bed to the right. One of the reasons we loved this apartment so much is that it came fully furnished. The bed was fine to start off with, but we’ve gotten so used to queen and king-sized beds on the road trip, we decided we needed to get our own bed.
Shae and I managed to get an amazing deal on a super king bed (same size as a king in the US) from Bensons For Beds which we’ve now had for a month or so.
In addition to its size and price, one of the main things that sold it to us is that it’s an ottoman bed, thereby giving us a decent amount of extra storage capacity.
On the opposite side of the bedroom was a desk and a wardrobe.
This bedroom has an en suite bathroom with a walk-in shower.
The second bedroom has a couple of twin beds and is what we’ll use as a guest room when people visit and as an office for Shae the rest of the time. We’ve rotated the beds 90° since then so that it’s easier to access both of them.
At the opposite end of the room there’s a small desk and closet.
Between the two bedrooms is a second bathroom. This one has a bath, but no shower.
As mentioned earlier, all of those rooms are downstairs. The solitary room upstairs is our living room which came furnished with two leather sofas, an ottoman with storage space inside, a TV, a large coffee table and another desk in the corner.
The doors you can see lead through to an apartment on the other side. In the past when they were vacation homes, it was possible to rent both our apartment and the one next door, opening up the door to have two living rooms together.
As a side note, our landlord owns the neighboring farm. When we got our new bed, he picked up the bed that came with the house. Rather than using a van though, he just loaded it into this and drove it down the road:
Settling In
Despite the property coming furnished, over the following week or two we realized that there was additional stuff we needed and wanted. The larger bed was one of them. Shae and I therefore took a couple of trips to Ikea to get some book shelves, storage carts, large dressers, etc., as well as ordering things like blackout curtains on Amazon.
We’re now really happy with our setup here, especially considering the price of the apartment. It was towards the top end of what we were looking to pay for rent, but it’s actually costing us less overall than we’d budgeted for. That’s because our rent includes the cost of everything – electricity, water, council tax, TV licence, etc. The only additional thing we have to pay for is internet which is a very reasonable ~£25 ($33) per month for high speed fibre broadband. We’re in a somewhat rural location, so having excellent internet speed and connection is fantastic.
I’ve also been enjoying being able to play with my first air fryer. We brought an Instant Pot on the road trip with us so that we could make meals anywhere, but there wasn’t space for an air fryer too. I can see why they’ve become so popular over the last few years as they’re amazing! I didn’t want to buy one and then regret not getting a larger one, so I decided to go all out and get a 10 liter dual air fryer; 3 liters on one side and 7 liters on the other.
We’re fortunate to have great neighbors in the other three apartments here, although one is in the process of moving out and another has bought a home and so will be moving soon too. Fingers crossed that whoever moves in to their apartments is also really nice.
Since riding 462 miles on RAGBRAI a few years ago, Shae hasn’t spent much time on a bike. She wanted to get back into it here in the UK, so she started researching bike options. Our neighbor recommended visiting a local trash dump as there’s also a recycling/charity center there where people donate bikes and other items to be sold on.
We headed there one afternoon and as we were looking at some of the bikes, a woman pulled over and dropped off another bike. She said it had hardly been used, so it should still be in good condition. We took it inside the center to find out how much they’d charge for it and they said it’d only be £20 (~$26.50) – sweet! We weren’t sure if it’d need much work to get it in working order; both tires were flat and it was pretty dirty from being left outside. Here in the UK there’s a bike/auto store called Halfords that offers a free bike check, or you can pay a little more to have them look more deeply at it and tune it up, so Shae took it there. It turned out that the bike was indeed in great condition. Even the tires were perfectly fine; they didn’t have a puncture, so all they needed was inflating.
After giving the bike a good wash, Shae’s been enjoying cruising up and down the road as she builds up her fitness to take some nice, long rides again.
Vegetable Garden
While we were on our 7 year, 50 state road trip, one of the few things I missed about having a home was having a vegetable garden. I used to have a great setup with several tomato plants, peppers, carrots, onions, cucumbers, cantaloupe, peas and more.
Our new apartment had some large planters outside with not much going on inside them, so I’ve taken over those and gotten some additional containers to grow stuff. I now have four tomato plants, two bell pepper plants, two chili pepper plants, two types of lettuce, cilantro and two large planters of potatoes.
I was a little worried that I’d started growing these too late in the season as I didn’t get them until mid-to-late June. The tomato and pepper plants from the store had already been started, but the cilantro and lettuce were started from seeds. I’d also never grown potatoes and they were looking a little rough in the store (the large bags were discounted to £0.50), but they’ve been seemingly flourishing.
I was particularly dubious about the prospects for the pepper plants as they haven’t grown anywhere near as tall as the bell pepper plants I used to grow in the US. However, in just the last day or two, one of the chili pepper plants has started to fruit and the others look like they’re on the verge of it.
As a kid growing up in the UK, I have fond memories of picking wild blackberries, with my mum then making blackberry and apple crumble (cobbler in the US). I was therefore very pleased to spot numerous blackberry bushes along our rural street recently. When I first saw them the berries were still red, but in the couple of weeks since they’ve started ripening.
I picked a bunch of ripe ones yesterday and will be heading to the grocery store tomorrow to pick up stuff to make blackberry and apple crumble myself. I’ve never made it before, so fingers crossed it turns out well!
Animal neighbors
In addition to having great human neighbors, we’re surrounded by animals too. For starters, two of our neighbors have lovely dogs who Truffles (mostly) gets along with.
We also live right next to a farm, so there are plenty of cows, sheep, horses, ponies, etc. around.
Every few days, the farmers seem to drive their sheep up the road from one field to another.
There’s even a village peacock! Apparently no one knows where it came from; we see it every so often but hear it more frequently (it has a very distinctive call).
If you’ve been following our blog for any length of time, you’ll know that Shae loves animals, so she’s in her element here even though she’s normally a city person.
One animal that she really wanted to see was a hedgehog. Despite living in the UK for five years when we first got married, she never got to see one in person. Growing up in the UK, I’d seen them a few times when I was a kid, but I don’t think I’ve seen any in person since the mid-to-late 80s. Sadly, there’s been a precipitous decline in their numbers over the last few decades.
I therefore wasn’t overly optimistic about our chances of seeing any, but one of our neighbors said she’d seen one before. A pet store in a nearby town sells hedgehog food too, so that bode well in theory, but again – I wasn’t optimistic.
I therefore couldn’t believe it when I took Truffles out late one night and saw something out of the corner of my eye. I assumed it was a bunny or something at first, so I was worried that Truffles would chase after it as soon as she saw it. Before I had a chance to distract her, she did indeed see it and got closer and started barking at it.
That’s when I got a closer look myself and saw that it was a hedgehog! I managed to corral Truffles back inside, then went to wake up Shae. It was something like 2am, so on the one hand I didn’t want to disturb her sleep as she was sleeping soundly. On the other hand though, I knew that this would be something she absolutely wouldn’t want to miss, so I roused her from her slumber.
As soon as she grasped that there was a hedgehog, she was out of bed in a flash and heading outside. My heart dropped initially as the hedgehog was no longer where it was, but thankfully it hadn’t gone too far and we were able to find it.
Upcoming Travel
After 7.5 years of moving pretty much every single week, it’s been incredibly nice being based in one place for a while. I think Truffles is starting to get used to the idea that we’re not going to be packing our suitcases and moving to a different hotel all the time; the majority of her life has been spent on the road, so it’s a somewhat new experience for her.
Due to the burnout of moving constantly – and still moving around a lot during our first couple of months in the UK – we didn’t plan to do any traveling for a little while as we got settled. We’re starting to emerge from our travel hibernation though and are planning a few trips. We’ll be setting off on our first trip next week; I have tickets to see a band I like at Chepstow Castle in Wales, so we’ll be spending almost a week in Wales before spending a couple of days just north of London to go to Whipsnade Zoo and see Thomas Dambo’s latest troll collection in the wild.
The following month we’ll be heading down to London for a few days as there are a couple of limited-time attractions Shae wants to visit. Then later in the fall I’ll be taking part in the Frequent Miler 100K Vacay challenge. My plans for that are top secret right now, so you’ll have to wait and see what I have planned 🙂
So that’s where we’re at. In addition to continuing to share about our travels while in the UK, we still have lots more content to share about our 50 state road trip, so stay tuned for that.
Great to hear that you’re doing well with the relocation and I’m very selfishly pleased that you’re still posting. Does your new place have air conditioning? It can get awfully hot if you have blackout curtains drawn and if you don’t have them drawn the 5 AM sunlight will get you.
No, it doesn’t have air conditioning unfortunately. Very few homes here do unless you live in a new-build apartment building. That said, the lack of air conditioning hasn’t been a big issue for us so far. With the windows open, we get a pretty good cross breeze; much of the immediate area is farmland, so there’s more wind than living downtown somewhere. With a fan going, we’ve been fine for the most part which is a relief as I hate when it’s too hot.
Great update! What a neat place.
Thanks!