Sunday, 9 April 2017
Here and there
Having spent three weeks in Prades, largely working in Cath's case and pottering, shopping and cooking in mine, we caught up with friends and have now returned to England. The overnight ferry from Le Havre on Friday night was the calmest crossing that I can remember. We had a very pleasant seafood dinner at La Voile Bleue in Le Havre opposite the yacht harbour on the ground floor of one of the many postwar apartment blocks built as part of the post war reconstruction. The Channel ports were very badly damaged. We drove to Exeter on Saturday morning for a fantastic breakfast at Lloyds Kitchen, which we discovered on our cycle trip to France last year: outstanding bacon, sausage and eggs. The Royal Clarence on Cathedral Green is under reconstruction but the fire has left very little. We went on to the farm shop at Riverford and last night had wonderful rump steak, very early asparagus and watercress, mopped up with some excellent sourdough from near Totnes. But not before a trip to the Cider Bar, a remarkable and much-loved survival up the street from Annie, who is kindly providing us with a base for the next six weeks.
Today we have moved on to Stroud, where Cath is on an art course until Tuesday. I will be walking the surrounding wolds and, on Tuesday, doing the town trail to look at the fantastic limestone buildings and to understand the history of this Cotswold market town.
Saturday, 18 March 2017
Round Milton Keynes in low gear
Milton Keynes is 50 this year and Cath had two days of meetings, so I took the chance to explore and see how it is doing. Cycling in London is too risky for my blood but MK was built with dedicated cycle paths from the outset and it is a pleasure to get around by bike even if too many paths are alongside busy roads: this is much more like being in Holland. As well as the London bike sharing scheme, Santander also sponsor a 300 cycle scheme in MK, where they have their main admin offices.
I did scoot round the city centre looking for various boring bits and pieces for our journey to France (spare headlight bulbs, decorator's stain block, which turns out to be like knotting with a white pigment; it is curious that despite all the technical advances the resin secreted on trees by the lac beetle in the Far East when dissolved in methylated spirits is still what works best). But the main shopping centre had none of them. It does have lots of clothes, an excellent John Lewis and endless places to eat and drink. It is rather showing its age (1979) but it is listed Grade II, so it has to be kept pretty much as originally designed, which is light and airy with clerestory glazing at high level. There are rather a lot of vacant units in the lower footfall zones and I was rather surprised that the tourist information office was closed on a Friday morning. It is only staffed by volunteers, which seems shortsighted for a borough as wealthy as this. Not that there is no sign of poverty: some of the many underpasses are used for the tents and sleeping bags of the homeless and there was a queue of ill-looking folk waiting for handouts only just across and down from John Lewis.
I cycled out to the retail park north west of the city centre for Halfords and B&Q, then on to Wolvercote, which says it is the first railway town: there was a large loco works here and it has many streets of Victorian terraces. It is the industrial big brother of Stoney Stratford and is pretty much joined on. The contrast is marked. SS is a largely unspoilt market town and, like the Cotswolds, benefits from being in the oolitic limestone belt, which runs diagonally across England. Some of pictures below show the warmth and appeal of the stone. In addition there are many pubs, a major cluster of Indian restaurants and a delightful ironmonger's, where I bought washing soda. SS is a reminder of what North Bucks was like before 19th and 20th Century growth created new towns. My exploration of MK led me to feel that good for cycling though it is, the over-wide boulevards and the inhuman scale don't quite work and are looking dated. Jagoda, the Polish waitress who served me my Italian meal yesterday said that it is a boring place and she likes the villages and the countryside better. Incidentally, almost without exception, the cafe, pub and restaurant staff I met were from continental Europe. Goodness knows who will do these jobs after we depart the EU.
After a fairly tiring day out in high winds I concluded that Milton Keynes is showing its age and the effects of a reduced local authority budget. Some of the housing is reminiscent of Skelmersdale with unsatisfactory mono pitch roofs and wan buff brick. The office buildings along the boulevards tend to have the same storey heights at all levels, resulting in mean little arcades at ground floor with no street presence. The little pavilions marking the road crossings in the city centre are rusting and uncared for. Many of the pedestrian underpasses in the city centre have homeless folk, quite a number in the self-supporting pyramid tents popular at music festivals. The city has some good facilities but the road system and endless roundabouts result in a place whose design has been driven by the car and the outcome is not very human somehow. Planned towns are not always bad but the old villages and towns within MK's urban area are very welcome for their haphazard organic forms.
I did scoot round the city centre looking for various boring bits and pieces for our journey to France (spare headlight bulbs, decorator's stain block, which turns out to be like knotting with a white pigment; it is curious that despite all the technical advances the resin secreted on trees by the lac beetle in the Far East when dissolved in methylated spirits is still what works best). But the main shopping centre had none of them. It does have lots of clothes, an excellent John Lewis and endless places to eat and drink. It is rather showing its age (1979) but it is listed Grade II, so it has to be kept pretty much as originally designed, which is light and airy with clerestory glazing at high level. There are rather a lot of vacant units in the lower footfall zones and I was rather surprised that the tourist information office was closed on a Friday morning. It is only staffed by volunteers, which seems shortsighted for a borough as wealthy as this. Not that there is no sign of poverty: some of the many underpasses are used for the tents and sleeping bags of the homeless and there was a queue of ill-looking folk waiting for handouts only just across and down from John Lewis.
I cycled out to the retail park north west of the city centre for Halfords and B&Q, then on to Wolvercote, which says it is the first railway town: there was a large loco works here and it has many streets of Victorian terraces. It is the industrial big brother of Stoney Stratford and is pretty much joined on. The contrast is marked. SS is a largely unspoilt market town and, like the Cotswolds, benefits from being in the oolitic limestone belt, which runs diagonally across England. Some of pictures below show the warmth and appeal of the stone. In addition there are many pubs, a major cluster of Indian restaurants and a delightful ironmonger's, where I bought washing soda. SS is a reminder of what North Bucks was like before 19th and 20th Century growth created new towns. My exploration of MK led me to feel that good for cycling though it is, the over-wide boulevards and the inhuman scale don't quite work and are looking dated. Jagoda, the Polish waitress who served me my Italian meal yesterday said that it is a boring place and she likes the villages and the countryside better. Incidentally, almost without exception, the cafe, pub and restaurant staff I met were from continental Europe. Goodness knows who will do these jobs after we depart the EU.
After a fairly tiring day out in high winds I concluded that Milton Keynes is showing its age and the effects of a reduced local authority budget. Some of the housing is reminiscent of Skelmersdale with unsatisfactory mono pitch roofs and wan buff brick. The office buildings along the boulevards tend to have the same storey heights at all levels, resulting in mean little arcades at ground floor with no street presence. The little pavilions marking the road crossings in the city centre are rusting and uncared for. Many of the pedestrian underpasses in the city centre have homeless folk, quite a number in the self-supporting pyramid tents popular at music festivals. The city has some good facilities but the road system and endless roundabouts result in a place whose design has been driven by the car and the outcome is not very human somehow. Planned towns are not always bad but the old villages and towns within MK's urban area are very welcome for their haphazard organic forms.
Wednesday, 15 March 2017
1 Lovaine Terrace, Berwick-upon-Tweed
If all goes to plan, it seems that we will be buying 1 Lovaine Terrace in mid-August to allow them time to find a house to buy or to rent. They are prepared to exchange contracts quite soon with a fixed date for completion. This is quite a result since we only went to see the house less than a week ago and there are no other suitable houses currently available. There are numerous projects that we would like to do but the house is perfectly OK in the meantime and only a short walk from the beach. The identity checks and proof of funding have been a little tiresome but that is how things are now and a news item this morning reported the growing prevalence of identity theft. Property is a major channel for money laundering. Link below to Rightmove listing.
http://www.rightmove.co.uk/property-for-sale/property-57027502.html
This does mean that we are likely to be in Prades during July and August, months of intense heat that we usually avoid but it will be nice to be back in our French home again after the usual partially unsatisfactory experiences in someone else's holiday home over the last 10 days. Why no vacuum, sharp knives or adequate kitchen extract? But the seal in the harbour was far more beguiling than I would have imagined.
http://www.rightmove.co.uk/property-for-sale/property-57027502.html
This does mean that we are likely to be in Prades during July and August, months of intense heat that we usually avoid but it will be nice to be back in our French home again after the usual partially unsatisfactory experiences in someone else's holiday home over the last 10 days. Why no vacuum, sharp knives or adequate kitchen extract? But the seal in the harbour was far more beguiling than I would have imagined.
Sunday, 12 March 2017
Looking for our next house
It has been our experience that rather than seeking the ideal house across a wide area, it is better to decide on a location and to compromise as necessary. So we are looking for a house based on these priorities:
Rightmove is a great tool for enabling remote house searches by defined criteria but it is arguably most beneficial to vendors as their houses are exposed to a bigger market and are more likely to sell quickly. This means that the most sought after houses are soon snapped up in a strong market. Potential buyers can soon discard no-hopers and neverwozzers. Tasteless, dreary and off-putting houses predominate, so the search soon narrows down to a few possibles. It really does save a lot of wasted time, provided that the particulars are well prepared. Often, however, photographs are erratic and do not show key spaces. Those listings that exclude simple layout plans are maddening.
A particular issue is the town house yard. Usually when they are not illustrated it is a bad sign. So it proved on Thursday when we looked at 6 The Parade, a former bed and breakfast with nasty aluminium window frames, a poor paint job to the rendered front elevation. Toilets, baths and showers have been shoe horned in where possible, spoiling some quite decent rooms. The basement ceiling height was very low and the yard was shallow, didn't run the full width of the property and had no rear access. Clearly a non-starter on viewing but not completely apparent from the particulars.
There is another possible in Main Street Tweedmouth but it is under offer. Listed, 4 bed, 4 recep, terraced walled garden and including a derelict cottage. £190,000 in an area near the dock that is improving. Extraordinary.
The same morning we looked at 1 Lovaine Terrace. This generous Edwardian end-of-terrace meets most of our requirements and is of a similar age to our last two houses but with more original features and a distant sea view from the first floor front rooms. There are 5 bedroooms and a studio in a stone building at the bottom of the garden. The grey-brown render above the stone ground floor and black barge boards gives it a certain Scottish style grimness but he interior is generous and attractive and could be better still. The Kennys who are perhaps ten years older than us are retired academics and would like to move into Newcastle to a slightly smaller house, probably in Heaton. Like us, they have many books. The house is on the north side of Berwick about 3 minutes walk from the station and a little over ten minutes into town. It would suit us very well and we are negotiating. The house is understood to have been provided for the headmaster of Berwick Grammar School, opposite, now a middle school.
http://www.rightmove.co.uk/property-for-sale/property-57027502.html
- In Berwick-upon-Tweed (a farm upbringing cured me of seeking rural solitude)
- At the seaside, which it is
- Within walking distance of the town centre and the excellent mainline railway station
- Large enough to provide 2 studies, a studio space for Cath, a workshop for me and guest rooms
- Scope for a ground floor accessible shower and a room that can become a bedroom
- A pleasant garden but not too large
- Scope for improvement project
- Houses of all ages as long as there is scope for interesting, well-proportioned rooms.
Rightmove is a great tool for enabling remote house searches by defined criteria but it is arguably most beneficial to vendors as their houses are exposed to a bigger market and are more likely to sell quickly. This means that the most sought after houses are soon snapped up in a strong market. Potential buyers can soon discard no-hopers and neverwozzers. Tasteless, dreary and off-putting houses predominate, so the search soon narrows down to a few possibles. It really does save a lot of wasted time, provided that the particulars are well prepared. Often, however, photographs are erratic and do not show key spaces. Those listings that exclude simple layout plans are maddening.
A particular issue is the town house yard. Usually when they are not illustrated it is a bad sign. So it proved on Thursday when we looked at 6 The Parade, a former bed and breakfast with nasty aluminium window frames, a poor paint job to the rendered front elevation. Toilets, baths and showers have been shoe horned in where possible, spoiling some quite decent rooms. The basement ceiling height was very low and the yard was shallow, didn't run the full width of the property and had no rear access. Clearly a non-starter on viewing but not completely apparent from the particulars.
There is another possible in Main Street Tweedmouth but it is under offer. Listed, 4 bed, 4 recep, terraced walled garden and including a derelict cottage. £190,000 in an area near the dock that is improving. Extraordinary.
The same morning we looked at 1 Lovaine Terrace. This generous Edwardian end-of-terrace meets most of our requirements and is of a similar age to our last two houses but with more original features and a distant sea view from the first floor front rooms. There are 5 bedroooms and a studio in a stone building at the bottom of the garden. The grey-brown render above the stone ground floor and black barge boards gives it a certain Scottish style grimness but he interior is generous and attractive and could be better still. The Kennys who are perhaps ten years older than us are retired academics and would like to move into Newcastle to a slightly smaller house, probably in Heaton. Like us, they have many books. The house is on the north side of Berwick about 3 minutes walk from the station and a little over ten minutes into town. It would suit us very well and we are negotiating. The house is understood to have been provided for the headmaster of Berwick Grammar School, opposite, now a middle school.
http://www.rightmove.co.uk/property-for-sale/property-57027502.html
Thursday, 9 March 2017
Adventures in Eyemouth
It is only a short stroll to the shops from our holiday rental cottage in Eyemouth and this is pretty damn convenient. The former Church of Scotland round the corner is now a museum and opposite is striking Victorian Gothic stone building.
It looked distinctly vacant with the usual blocked gutters and dampness from failed rainwater down pipes but what a fantastic corner turret with fish scale slates. I wandered up the street wondering vaguely whether it might be for sale and there it was in the window of Currie Johnston & Co. Solicitors and Notaries Public, offers around £160,000. I popped in and asked if I might have particulars."The owner's in the back," I was told by the tight grey curled receptionist. He was extracted, wild-haired and unsettled, and we sat down. He explained his bad luck, ill health and the step back from principle of a firm run by his father and uncle to back room boy and employee of the firm now owning the practice. And thank God he no longer had the admin and (shuddering) the dealings with the Law Society. There was a sale agreed in principle with a community group, Heritage Lottry Fund Bid, how could he have been so hasty, gentleman's agreement, open to offers, would I like to have a look? I agreed to come back at ten to twelve after making coffee for my wife.
I did and here are some photographs of what had been the bank manager's flat or hoose, as my host designated it. I had failed to read the particulars carefully enough, as Mrs Gowthorpe pointed out later, but it became clear during the walk around that the pig-in-the-poke for sale is a largely flying freehold on the first and attic floors. Charming space but with 1,000 sq ft of poorly-lit, leaking roof space and a basement strong room. And it is full to bursting with old legal files, which your man is unlikely to have the will to sort. The rest of the building is owned by the Council and the roof and structural responsibilities are shared. Nightmare possibilities ensue and although only listed Grade C, the building would eat money and a Sassenach frustrating a local community group and the Council would be a pariah with little chance of getting approval for anything. So that's a no, then. And in Eyemouth, are ye touched?
It looked distinctly vacant with the usual blocked gutters and dampness from failed rainwater down pipes but what a fantastic corner turret with fish scale slates. I wandered up the street wondering vaguely whether it might be for sale and there it was in the window of Currie Johnston & Co. Solicitors and Notaries Public, offers around £160,000. I popped in and asked if I might have particulars."The owner's in the back," I was told by the tight grey curled receptionist. He was extracted, wild-haired and unsettled, and we sat down. He explained his bad luck, ill health and the step back from principle of a firm run by his father and uncle to back room boy and employee of the firm now owning the practice. And thank God he no longer had the admin and (shuddering) the dealings with the Law Society. There was a sale agreed in principle with a community group, Heritage Lottry Fund Bid, how could he have been so hasty, gentleman's agreement, open to offers, would I like to have a look? I agreed to come back at ten to twelve after making coffee for my wife.
I did and here are some photographs of what had been the bank manager's flat or hoose, as my host designated it. I had failed to read the particulars carefully enough, as Mrs Gowthorpe pointed out later, but it became clear during the walk around that the pig-in-the-poke for sale is a largely flying freehold on the first and attic floors. Charming space but with 1,000 sq ft of poorly-lit, leaking roof space and a basement strong room. And it is full to bursting with old legal files, which your man is unlikely to have the will to sort. The rest of the building is owned by the Council and the roof and structural responsibilities are shared. Nightmare possibilities ensue and although only listed Grade C, the building would eat money and a Sassenach frustrating a local community group and the Council would be a pariah with little chance of getting approval for anything. So that's a no, then. And in Eyemouth, are ye touched?
Tuesday, 7 March 2017
And so after a pitiful cup of hot milky liquid at the Millstone, which purported to be cappuccino, we completed the sale about 2:45. We handed over the keys and explained the heating system that I may have made a little too complex. Then off up the M6 and the Howgills were looking as beautiful as I have seen them as we approached Shap. We stopped off at Tebay services for tea and a snack to put us on, then settled down to listen to more of Colleen McCullough's The Thorn Birds as we covered the remainder of the 180-mile journey to Eyemouth. The description of cane cutting in Cairns' appallingly humid jungle climate full of poisonous, clawed or biting creatures reinforced our decision to avoid Queensland and probably all of Australia.
Eyemouth is a small fishing port with a nice beach and a distinct Scots sternness and there are signs of gentrification. It is commutable from Edinburgh. The cottage is very comfortable and we have settled in nicely. There is a cosy first floor sitting room with a view along the prom.
The owners have been stung by poor tenants in the past but whether this has prompted the blizzard of admonitory notices or has been generated by them is hard to say. Just in case additional advice and prohibitions occur to the owner, a notice board is provided on the stairs. If it all becomes too much a ceramic block bearing the motto RELAX sits in the bathroom window sill. There is a seaside theme and I think that there must be a city in China that produces anchors made of driftwood, lighthouses, faux fishing notices and naive model yachts to which "Gone Sailing" messages are appended. More interesting was the boat we saw in the harbour, on the right in this picture. Must close now as a fish and chip experience is in the offing.
Saturday, 4 March 2017
Getting ready to hand over
Today we eschewed the Premier Inn breakfast in favour of Café Northcote's excellent £6.95 Lancashire breakfast at the Cathedral, visible over the sedum roof outside our first floor room. It was a grand start to the day and a bargain, bearing in mind Northcote's insistence on quality produce. We have been eating at Nigel and Craig's establishments since 1984 and they have been rightly obsessive about this.
Beneath the sedum roof outside our room is Turtle Bay, the latest in a Caribbean-themed bar and restaurant chain owned by a Bristolian Sri Lankan, Ajith Jayawickrema, whose initial fortune came from founding the Las Iguanas chain. He also sits on the board of Tampopo, the pan-Asian restaurant started in Manchester by Nick Jeffrey and David Fox in 1997. There are not so many modern places to eat and drink in Blackburn and around seven this evening Turtle Bay was pretty busy. It opens until 1:30 and since maintaining any night life business in Blackburn is difficult, perhaps it may prosper, however bogus such themed ventures may be.
Today we grasped the nettle of being conscious of having kept back more stuff than we can fit in the car, as a result of the hasty removal. We loaded the car and some things will have to go to the tip but not too many. Nonetheless we will pay a fuel penalty for carting about more than we needed to. Then cleaning the garage, rubbing down and painting the back door panels that I fitted yesterday to cover the void where the cat flap was and a score of cleaning and touching up tasks. Cath had outstanding success with reviving carpets suffering deep furniture indenting.
Just after 4:00 I met Russ for a couple of pints at The Millstone, opposite our two houses and had more conversation than in the several years he has been living next door. Not enough effort on my part, I fear, and a reminder to engage more and better. We had a good chat and I discovered that his brother is an anaesthetist in Newcastle. And so to the Shajan on Longsight Road for a farewell curry, Cath much bucked by having had her first reasonable night's sleep for a week, such has been the bouleversement of this truncated packing up period. Never again.
Beneath the sedum roof outside our room is Turtle Bay, the latest in a Caribbean-themed bar and restaurant chain owned by a Bristolian Sri Lankan, Ajith Jayawickrema, whose initial fortune came from founding the Las Iguanas chain. He also sits on the board of Tampopo, the pan-Asian restaurant started in Manchester by Nick Jeffrey and David Fox in 1997. There are not so many modern places to eat and drink in Blackburn and around seven this evening Turtle Bay was pretty busy. It opens until 1:30 and since maintaining any night life business in Blackburn is difficult, perhaps it may prosper, however bogus such themed ventures may be.
Today we grasped the nettle of being conscious of having kept back more stuff than we can fit in the car, as a result of the hasty removal. We loaded the car and some things will have to go to the tip but not too many. Nonetheless we will pay a fuel penalty for carting about more than we needed to. Then cleaning the garage, rubbing down and painting the back door panels that I fitted yesterday to cover the void where the cat flap was and a score of cleaning and touching up tasks. Cath had outstanding success with reviving carpets suffering deep furniture indenting.
Just after 4:00 I met Russ for a couple of pints at The Millstone, opposite our two houses and had more conversation than in the several years he has been living next door. Not enough effort on my part, I fear, and a reminder to engage more and better. We had a good chat and I discovered that his brother is an anaesthetist in Newcastle. And so to the Shajan on Longsight Road for a farewell curry, Cath much bucked by having had her first reasonable night's sleep for a week, such has been the bouleversement of this truncated packing up period. Never again.
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