I can't remember if it was our 5 or 10 year plan, but we wanted to move away from the South-east to find a better life in the country with a bit of land and somewhere to work on my van without upsetting the neighbours. Not that we didn't like West Malling; we had been there for 10 years and had a number of close friends, including our neighbours Rob and Becky and Dave and Kate. But it was time for a change and coincided with Kim graduating from the European School of Osteopathy. There were just too many osteopaths in Maidstone and if Kim was to set up a practice, it had to be somewhere with less competition.
Kim is from Welsh stock and her parents have a flat in Swansea, so we had spent weekends and the odd week's holiday exploring South Wales and the Gower Peninsular in particular. I had been at University in Exeter and lived in Plymouth for a couple of years after graduating and so always dreamed of returning to the South-west one day. However, we both decided that south Wales was where we should start looking ideally for a small holding with a few acres of land. The Gower turned out to be too expensive and very few houses came with land, so on the advice of one of Kim's Dad's old school friends, we expanded our search area west to include Pembrokeshire and in particular, the area around the small market town of Narberth. Based on a quick preliminary visit, Narberth felt very similar in many ways to West Malling.
We had not really considered moving that far west as I still had to work in London a few days a week having agreed with my employer that I could work from home on at least a part time basis. There are lots of smallholdings in Pembrokeshire and west Carmarthenshire, however, we discovered that many of them are very remote and part of the criteria for our perfect place in the country was that it had to be within walking distance of a pint of milk and a short drive to a train station. As Kim was nearing the end of her course and was offered an Associate position working in an established osteopathic practice in East Grinstead, we decided to put the house hunting on hold for while. Following her graduation in July, we went to Swansea for a week to spend time with Kim's brother Andrew and girlfriend Kelley (now wife) were visiting Wales. As we were back in the area, we decided to check up on any developments in the housing market.
We had registered with a few local estate agents earlier in the year and had recently been sent details for a property called Valley Gate, just outside Narberth. Kim had done a quick drive-by a few days earlier with her parents and was initially put off by the seemingly remote location and position of the house right on the road side. However,with Andrew and Kelly in tow, we decided to have another look. We both fell in love with the location (a 20 minute walk to Narberth - not so remote after all!) and the land that came with it; 3.5 acres in two plots either side of Valley Road. We did a second viewing the next day and, thanks to Kim's Dad who had agreed to provide a bridging loan at a very competitive rate, we were in a position to make a 'speculative' offer that was accepted straight away.
It took until October for the sale to go through but we could not move until Xmas, so took a week off when we got the keys to gut the place. It had been rented out for a number of years and was in real need of updating as the lovely 1970's fitted bedroom furniture shows. The front, original part of the house, is probably 200 years old with 2' thick stone rubble walls. The rear of the house is a 2 storey extension that was originally flat-roofed, but in the 1980's a new roof was added to the whole house. Downstairs has a sitting room, kitchen and bathroom and upstairs there are 4 bedrooms and a small bathroom.
Once we stripped out the fitted furniture we found thick mould on the external walls that was removed with copious quantities of bleach. We also found central heating pipes had been run across the floors under the fitted units. We spent the week stripping all the wallpaper off (along with plaster in places!) and removing all carpets to give us a 'blank canvas' to work with. There are more photographs on Picasa
After all this excitement, on the morning we were leaving to go back to Kent, we had a bit of a flood following a night of very heavy rain. No water got in the house, but a few hastily dug trenches were required to drain the water away from where it got trapped behind the house. The 'locals' said it was the heaviest rain they had seen for 10 years. There are a few more photo's of the flooding again on Picasa.
So this was the starting point and we have now been here a year...
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