28/11/2023

EAST HARPTREE

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Now seemingly based in the West Country, we decided to trade Redland in for two homes. A lower cost English home out in the Chew Valley of Somerset and a villa in Spain.

Sunnyside Cottage, Townsend,
East Harptree, BS40 6BH

Sunnyside was close to the Chew Valley lakes and placed us closer to the Royal Bath & West Showground. A visible sign of us going ‘country’ was when we went out and bought some serious walking shoes. But the week we moved in, there was an outbreak of Foot & Mouth Disease and even the footpath that crossed in front of our cottage was closed with notes threatening prosecution for those who transgressed – or trespassed. 

In the end we stayed only ten months. I painted the outside, put in a good patio and sold the house for a £50k+ profit – to the couple that we had beaten to the house earlier.

ASIDE: Matt was involved in the Ideal Home Show and I visited to collect grandson Dan, to take him to the Natural History Museum and then back to Somerset. The attraction was that like most children of his age he was besotted by dinosaurs and I took him to see the Animatronic T-Rex at the museum. As you enter the display the museum had placed two small raptors. They made a noise that completely freaked toddler Dan out, I had to carry him wriggling in fear past them and the T-Rex, so it was not much of a success. On the train heading westward, opposite Dan was a young woman, heavily pregnant with her first child. She appeared to seek some useful experience by talking with Dan. He explained he had seen the T-Rex, though nothing of his reaction now he was safely away from the environment. The woman asked, ‘Could it eat you?’, Dan pondered this and said ‘Oh yes – in one gob’ – the carriage around us dissolved into giggles.

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