Journey To A Simpler Life - Part 1

For most, it is the quest for the mortgage or the bigger house but for me having done the mortgage and doer upper house thing I wanted something else. Now looking back this desire or dream was planted way back in my earlier life following a trip to New Zealand at 19. But there never was an opportunity or support from partners or just life didn't match up, this was until back in 2020 when I hadn't long relocated to North Devon following a marriage breakdown. I was renting a flat and had met someone and been dating over a year and I guess if honest I was starting to feel like me again. However weird that sounds, I had lost the actual me (I think that is something that if we are honest most people can easily do in stages of their life). I had spent most of my adult life trying to conform and please people, the jobs, the clothes, the cars and status I guess but there had been the real me being suppressed. So the move, was the beginning, then I guess the covid situation had probably had a play in it too bringing home that actually not having a mortgage or lots of financial ties would help with control or if life throws a curve ball as it quite often does.

So, I was looking at what was about to buy property wise to cater for me and my 2 boys but all that I could afford following a divorce settlement and my self employed earnings would be a 2 bed flat in a town environment, not the location I wanted and reason for the move. The beach, the countryside were where I wanted and I had already realised that I definitely wasn't a so called townie, plus there was no given that I would definitely get a mortgage on my own. So I got thinking and came back to an idea, that I had returned to the UK with back in 2001 but it hadn't been the right time but perhaps 2020 was.

I wrote it down, in it's basic plan of land with a cabin as such as ideally some sort of basic camp site with potential to grow food etc and nervously mentioned my idea as such to my partner thinking ah he'll tell me how silly I am being and unrealistic it was. But no he didn't at all, now one thing about Craig my partner is he doesn't show excitement in emotions but what he did do was kind of kick it off, well at least help turn my dream into an actual possibility at this stage. I had been looking at Rightmove constantly for land or similar in the area and then I remember when Craig said there's somewhere I want to show you, his dad had looked at it about a year before to put their lodge on but it hadn't been right for them. So off we went, pulling off in Craig's 4x4 into an overgrown non driven on for a while track and walking through waist high long grass to a low fence, to be honest I wasn't expecting a lot except maybe a farm field down a track. Look he said and wow the view, that was it, that was exactly what I wanted and more, the view over the estuary and the ocean. Yes, there was a derelict caravan on some paving slabs three quarters of the way down the plot, that looked as though it had been vacated in a hurry and had definitely suffered at the hands of the weather and massively overgrown blackthorn hedges that if left would of eventually invaded and consumed the ground. But this was it, I am one of these people that have to see the sea every day, I'd purposely drive by daily to ensure I got my fix of the water view now this would mean I could wake to the view of the ocean or as it is now named Swell View. And so from this moment the journey began .....