Saturday 31 December 2022
It is the end of the year. I have too many thoughts on the passing of this year, so I’ll not start the epic ramble that would ensue if I started writing about 2022. Suffice (it) to say, it’s been a very mixed, unsettled, challenging year but I have also written a novel, now live sort of between London and Scotland and lots of other good things have happened too.
In April, we saw this house for sale and both liked it but dismissed it for being too remote. I still added it to my Rightmove “Saved Properties”. Within a short period of time, it was under offer and I removed it from Saved Properties. Then, one day in late July, while broadening my property search from the Jedburgh area, I found this house, back on the market due to “sale falling through”. I was very excited to see it again so sent it to Chris, who got excited again, but we both tried to rule it out for being too remote. But we couldn’t quite let it go, so decided to contact the agent and ask about the internet, how remote it really was and other practicalities. The agent was very helpful and told us the previous sale falling through was a mortgage issue rather than anything to do with the house. Chris was busy with work and neither of us was keen to travel north during the Edinburgh Festival and school holidays so we decided to book a viewing for the very end of August if the house was still for sale, and view some other properties too.
We drove from Lewisham to Selkirk, stopped there for lunch and both liked the feel of Selkirk. Our viewing was at 4pm and we had an AirBnB room booked for the night in Moffat. We set off from Selkirk, Chris driving, me following on Google Maps. Neither of us could believe that the road from Selkirk had names of what we assumed were small villages and yet no shops. I had clicked on various points along the road using Google Street View and had found no shops. I had read reviews from accommodation in the area, expecting to find reports of shops that we had been unable to spot. It was apparent from the reviews that the area is very remote, but I did find out that two supermarkets delivered to the camping/caravan sites, which seemed like the next best thing to a shop hidden away in the countryside.
There were indeed no hidden shops or amenities. As we drove, we kept exclaiming how beautiful it was. We may also have mentioned a fair few times things like, “Wow, it really is in the middle of nowhere”. Unfamiliar with the at-times single-track roads, the bends in the road and the route in general, we drove slowly. For both of us, the beautiful scenery was the overriding memory of that first drive. I know I repeatedly said, and still do say, how I couldn’t believe there was somewhere as stunning and unspoilt as the Ettrick Valley but which I had no idea was in Scottish Borders and not Scottish Highlands. Really, it’s stunning, and in August, unlike Highlands, we passed very, very few cars or other vehicles.
We arrived at the house a couple of minutes before 4pm, just as the owner was opening the gates. We drove across the bridge that forms part of the drive and parked the car. I took a photo of swallows (possibly swifts) perched on a wire above where we parked. It was a slightly cloudy but otherwise sunny afternoon. We ended up spending the first two hours outdoors, in part walking and standing around, in part chatting about the house and the area. We then spent an hour indoors. Chris and I kept smiling at each other, we knew it was the right house. Our only real reservation was its remoteness and Chris was unexpectedly concerned about ‘operating’ the house. The previous owner had showed us the channels he’d built in the garden to divert water from parts of the garden/land that flooded, he’d rigged up an internet network using a data SIM card in a remote hub up the garden, there were cables and pipes all over the place, the water supply is from a spring, the water tank had things that would need checking, the heating was run via a back boiler powered by a multi-fuel burner (thankfully, those days are behind us), there are solar panels, there are pipes, there are switches – it was overwhelming how much the previous owner knew and how much we would need to know. So far, we have just about got by but there will be issues arising, ongoing.
We left the house at 7pm. Unbelievably, that viewing had taken three hours. The owners were welcoming, helpful and delightfully enthusiastic about the house (they were only moving because of schools, and lack thereof) and, while overwhelmed by all the information we’d been given, we knew it was the right house.
However, we had five more viewings lined up for the next few days, none in such remote locations. As soon as we had viewed the first three, we realised we were comparing them to this house and they were nowhere near as nice. They were all on the edge of Kircudbright (Kir-coo-brie), a small town by the coast (a big plus for me, the estuary/sea). But this house won hands-down for the house and we both kept thinking about the beautiful scenery and the quiet.
The fourth house, unexpectedly, ended up being a close contender. By then, we had found out that there was another viewing of ‘our’ house the following day. That fourth house was also fairly remote, surrounded by countryside and a really lovely property and garden. We spent that night trying to figure out which house to go for. I think we would have been happy in the other one too, but my uncertainties were that it was all on the ground floor and right on the road (a country lane but seemingly more cars – though that isn’t many – than on our road) and an acre or more of woodland belonged to the property, which was opposite the house on the other side of the road. I love woodland but it bothered me that it wasn’t obviously part of the property and there was enough room opposite the house (which had parking alongside the house) for a vehicle to park, which, from my Kent and London perspective, meant it was a good spot for fly tipping or wild camping. Probably just my paranoias, but it bothered me. Also, the one neighbouring house was on AirBnB and I can’t for a minute imagine you wouldn’t get knocks at the door with enquiries and issues or the unsettling feeling of not knowing who was next door.
In the morning, we decided to view our first property of that day and agreed that, if we wanted ‘our’ house, we would put in an offer before lunchtime, knowing there was a viewing in the afternoon. The house we viewed was in a really amazing setting. It was a sunny day and, after the viewing, we walked across fields to a nearby loch. It was idyllic and beautiful. That setting, including the pretty, manageable garden, got us wondering about the house. It was down country lanes but only a couple of miles away, a walk, from a pub and a few shops, there was a cluster of houses all within 100 metres and only about six miles from a town. The scenery was lovely, no traffic noise. But the house was not right, though with quite a lot spending on it, it could have been very nice. As I think about the house now, nothing inside stands out. The outside and the setting, however, were lovely and a much better and easier garden than here.
The house with the woodland was still the main contender. Thinking about that house now, I think the house would have been great, particularly the kitchen, living room and the courtyard which the house was shaped around. However, the setting wasn’t right with that one. I have no doubt we chose the house that was right for us and it gets better every day. It has not been without challenges and issues, and we know challenges will be an ongoing feature of living out here, but the house feels comforting, familiar and safe. It doesn’t feel completely ‘home’ yet, but that is because we haven’t put everything away and we have inadequate furniture, no curtains, only three pictures up (the only hooks that were here) and there is too much brown.
It’s 09:19 and the weather forecast suggests that the thick white cloud slowly creeping down the hill out the window I’m sitting opposite is going to unleash some “light rain and snow”, which surely is sleet. We have a fry-up for breakfast, a good end to the year, I think, and we’re planning on making the living room look more homely. We are not planning on staying up to watch New Year’s Eve fireworks (oh, wait, who on earth would be setting off fireworks in the middle of nowhere?!), we are not planning on first footing and we are not planning to stay up until midnight. All the same, happy new year.
