One Year (and One Day)

It's exactly a year (and a day) since we moved from the Bright Lights, Big City to the Not So Many Lights, Small Village. And we don't regret it for one moment. We love living here in our little village in the far south of Somerset. We live in the midst of beautiful countryside and we're just a 30-minute drive from the coast. We can also get to Bristol in an hour, if we need the big shops (which I often do, being a bit of a window-shopaholic), or a big dose of culture (although we've not felt the need for that yet.) Exeter is even closer (although the traffic is awful); Bath is also not that far away; and even Reading, from whence we came (by way of Bristol, Wigan and Henley), can be reached in a couple of hours (if you drive like I do...)

We moved from a town with a high street that looks like this


to a village with a high street that looks like thisFrom a house with a back garden like this

to one like thisA house that looks like this from the frontto one that looks (or looked, when the building work was just starting), like this. Admittedly, I do miss the features of the Victorian house we used to live in, compared to the 1970s-ness of this one, but what we gave up in character, we got back in square foot.Here's a slightly more recent photo of the front garden, although since this photo was taken we've removed that big bush to the right of the front door and hubby has planted a little 'cottage garden' in the bed to the left.Compared to the front garden we had before which led out onto a road with four lanes of traffic...And the front garden which now leads out onto a little village road.A couple more shots of the lovely village And, in the year since we've lived here we've also renovated our house and turned it from thisTo this
Not bad for a year's hard work!