Keeping on the move

• European travel
• World Travel
• Properties
  • Horfield Bristol
  • Clifton Bristol

• • Plymouth
  • Saltash
  • Thornbury
  • Byfleet
  • Benfleet
  • Carlton
  • Bedford
  • Fulham
  • Redland
  • East Harptree
  • Pinosol Javea
  • Thurleigh
  • Biddenham
  • Watlington
  • Princes Risborough
  • Ilmer
  • Colomer Javea
  • Longwick
  • Chinnor
  • Thame, Arnold Way
  • Thame, Pickenfield

One thing that friends and families would agree upon, is that we have moved around quite regularly, thereby messing up the D section of their address book. So here is a full list of where we have lived.

For some sort of unknown reason I had an old world atlas that, each time I took a flight, I anally drew in a line showing the as-the-crow flies route. When I first had a personal website I created graphics for this. I have updated these, as at late November 2019, and show them here:

These indicate to me that I need to do more in eastern Europe, south America. Africa and Australasia, before I am less able to manage long-haul travel.

 But it also shows how my world travel pales into insignificance against Matt’s who appears never to be off a plave!

Before we married we had both grown up in Bristol. I had lived in just two houses both in in Horfield Bristol. These actually backed on to each other.

In the first picture – see Ludlow Road, the mid-terrace house to the right of the alleyway and Wordsworth Road home, the right-hand semi at the top of the photo – we actually moved our stuff through the hedge!

Jane had an early family home in Highland Square Clifton but much of her youth was spent at Alma Vale Road. When we first started going out together we had both to be at a phone booth at a pre-arranged time, with the relevant coins. If it was already in use we had to persevere until we could get through – a different age!

I was doing well at Sweda given the forthcoming decimalisation in February  1971. In August 1969 we had saved enough to put a 5% deposit down on this starter semi- on a new estate. This was just across the Tamar bridge from Plymouth in Saltash. I played rugby for Saltash and joined the local Round Table. Married life was blossoming!

We moved back to the Bristol area in August 1970 and bought this mature home overlooking playing fields in this market town, just north of Bristol. It was from here that Matt joined us, being born at nearby Almondsbury hospital. Thornbury Round Table and Ladies Circle kept us both busy, while I switched jobs to join Rank Xerox and seek out some professional sales/ marketing training.

I joined Hugin and needed to move up towards London, we bought this semi in Byfleet, where the children started school and I commuted to the East End around the South Cicrular – no M25 or M3 back then.

I joined KeyMed and we moved to Essex. I enjoy using this photo because I know the vellure short shorts and basin haircut offends Matt! This was an interesting reversed house (living upstairs, sleeping down) that maximised its views of the Thames estuary. I swapped the South Circular for hours spent on the A13 and A127.

I joined Texas Instruments as their Personal Computer Manager and we moved to Bedfordshire. Strangely, this house on The Moor also had us sleeping downstairs. Spot that tree, there was a small copse of them and I spent much of my spare time raking up leaves. The kids schooling took precedence over any moves and we spent some years around Bedford, here and at Merton Road while I took on a number of roles. That double-length garage was used as the first warehouse when I signed a deal to become the distributor for Sinclair computers, in UK, France and China.

Jane was at college and the kids at school in Bedford, so we spent too much time travelling in and out. We bought this substantial seven-bedded detached house in the town to make things easier for them. While I was schlepping to and from London, by rail or road. Later, Jane taught at two of the Harpur Trust schools, while Sarah and Matt attended the other two.

In 1994 we moved into Fulham, and put in the loft conversion (you can see from the Veluxes). We were just paces away from Craven Cottage but fortunately they had yet to be bought by Al Fayed and so attendances were quite thin. I worked for News International Exhibitions until the show and I were sold off to Blenheim – offering a nice easy drive to Chiswick offices. While Jane taught in Putney.

In 1997 I left to pursue various consultancies and initiatives of my own and we moved back to our roots, buying this property in Redland Bristol.

In 2000 we decided to split our property in two, buying this cottage in Somerset near the lakes. We invested in good walking shoes making all sorts of rambling plans, but as we moved in an outbreak of Foot & Mouth meant that all the bridleways and footpaths were closed.

With the balance we bought a villa in Javea on an urbanisation, so that we could lock it up safely in between our six/seven visits a year.

Lured back to Bedford to work with a friend who was in the process of a reverse takeover and IPO in telecoms, we initially rented this thatched cottage. The attached farm specialised in turkeys and geese and, as this was the period between the 9/11 attack and Christmas, we had a ringside seat as their numbers declined steeply.

 We moved into this modern detached home in Biddenham – where regrettably it is most memorable for me having my first taste of heart disease and my first stent inserted at Papworth.

By 2003 I was sucked back into show business, the Apple exhibitions, and moved to Watlington, setting up offices in Marlow.

 Matt had moved in with us and, to get back our independance, we bought this small terraced house for him to use, but with a view that it could be our UK bolt hole, as we set out to buy a full-time home in Spain.

In 2007 as we prepared to buy and set up our Spanish home we moved into a rental bungalow. It’s behind the trees, sadly we have no pix and Google Earth obviously did not send their vehicle up this lane. It was ideal to sort out what we would dump, drop off at Sarah’s for her new home, and what we would actually take to Spain.

In 2007 we moved full-time to Javea for five years, retaining Poppy Road as our UK base, but it began to prove too small (no storage) for our purposes.

In 2010 we traded up ourUK bolt hole to this four-bedded detached modern house, with a minimum maintenance garden, as our base from Spain and Matt’s from Dubai. When we moved back to the UK we rented this house out until 2017 but in 2012 bought Easdon as our UK home.

In 2012 we bought this Chinnor property. while renting out the Longwick one. We settled in Chinnor for almost seven years.

We moved from Chinnor in September 2019 as a six-month rental while we selected our next home.

Late in November 2019 we acquired Pickenfield in Thame and completed our early flurry of decoration and gardening just in time for the Covid lock-down.

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