What are your future travel plans?

Of course we would like to travel in the future, as you know from recent posts I find travel interesting, inspiring, stimulating. I learn a lot about different cultures and I connect with people from all over but you might also have worked out that in one year we have made four trips. For us that’s excessive.

So, for now, we don’t have any travel plans especially as we have bought a house. All our time and energy is going into the house. This has become the number one project in the “Noffke home”. It takes precedence above all else.

I did mention I was going to tell you about our new house? Warning: this is not a travel post at all so if you are hoping for more travel plans they are not happening. You can stop reading. But if you want to know more about our purchase you are in the right place.

So this is the way it went. When we arrived in Scotland we agreed that we would first get to know the place before we bought. “If it takes 2 years so be it” we agreed. But even while in South Africa I had been watching the Scottish homeowners market for a couple of years so I had a fair idea of prices and places. once we trans-located we would every so often take a drive to an area just to get acquainted with it.

In December I met up with two of my Scottish cousins (separately) and discussed how they chose their home, how they maintained them and any building renovations they had attempted. There was two things I was struck by: one of them (J) had quite a laissez-faire (let it be) approach to buying a house and it sounded a lot more light-hearted than my very serious approach. The other (C) said: “winter is the best time to look because you are more likely to see the damp” (very important in Scotland).

You can probably see where this is going if you add the two together you will find the Noffkes looking for a house that same winter with much abandonment – well sort of. Yes we did look. And we did find. We had actually driven along the Tweed Valley to meet cousin(J) in Peebles when just before getting to Peebles I had said: “I could very easily live here” referring to the Tweed Valley. It had won my heart over.

On our way back from our cousinly chat and when passing Walkerburn Derek said: “well maybe we should take a look because it is a lovely location.” That evening we looked online at the sales of houses, found what looked to be in our price range and decided to go back and check out the area.

We felt it to be in our favor to look the next day as there was quite a bit of flooding in the area and the river itself was flooded. We would see just to what extent this would affect our future property. Happily we saw it wouldn’t affect our property but tragically we heard that someone had drowned trying to cross the bridge. The accident had happened the day before we visited. Out of respect for the people involved I won’t be saying anything more about it.

We loved the vicinity right away: the views and the natural beauty of the forests, hills, fields and river were really beautiful. It is very rural but the village has all we need. It has a couple of shops, café, coffee shop, etc. nearby doctor and pharmacy, bus route and a couple of towns close by if needed. It has many cycling and walking trails which is just what we want on our doorstep. We could just imagine our friends coming to visit and having things to do and places to visit.

We put an offer in and it was accepted. It was all quite straight forward but we have not moved in yet because the changes we want to make will be easier to do before we move. We have discovered that getting work done takes a lot longer than we expected because builders and artisans are in high demand. It is quite a frustrating feeling not to be moving yet, yet it is also quite exciting to be in a position to make the changes. It might still happen that it will take two years (from when we immigrated) before we’re living in our own house but we sincerely hope it will be sooner. We are very grateful for being able to buy a house of our own and grateful too that things seem to be unfolding in a very special way.

Next time I will tell you what Derek is doing to speed up the process.

Take care
A warm smile coming to you from the Scottish borders.