Sometime in 2005 - January 2007
We've got the plot.....but have we lost the plot as well, psychologically speaking! Only time will tell and it's going to take a while to turn this vision into a reality, so patience and determination will be required.....lets hope we've got what it takes! Lets start at the beginning, how did we get to be so lucky and come to live in this beautiful spot......?
My boyfriend Guy and I used to live in a maisonette in Denham Green, Bucks and some people considered this to have quite rural surrounds, but we lived on a road that had bumper to bumper traffic during rush hours and often the neighbours above and adjacent to us were noisey with their music or loud arguing........we wanted more peace and quiet! We would usually drive out to the Chiltern Hills only 30 mins away, to go walking above Chinnor, the woods up there are lovely. We enjoyed Autumn walks most of all as it was always a spectacular time with the trees showing off their combinations of brilliant colours; bright reds, golden yellows, and rustic browns. Each year just as we reached the hills, one of us would always turn to the other in the car and say ".....the trees look great at this time of the year don't they?" and after about the third year we noticed that we ALWAYS made this comment at the same point of the journey, it was like a deja-vous, we just used to laugh, as we so clearly loved the changing colour of trees that we just couldn't help ourselves commenting on it! We still do it today and now we are surrounded by the trees all the time! We ended up moving out of Denham Green in December 2000 to a little village called Bledlow, just down the road from Chinnor......it's a lovely place.....quintessentially English!
From Bledlow you have access directly onto the Chiltern Hills by foot and most people set off from the village pub "The Lions" and do a circular walk to end up back at the pub for a pint and some lunch in-front of a roaring fire! Countryside living really suited Guy and I and we spent a fair time walking and cycling around the hillside loving it! Oneday in 2005, whilst Guy was out walking he noticed a little cottage just off the edge of the "Ridgeway", he had seen it before but paid it little attention, it was different now though because we had been thinking about moving house and had been looking out for a small detached cottage! Guy told me about this place and the next day I walked up with him to see it! I knew instantly that this would make a perfect home for Guy and I and considered it to be in pretty good shape! It was old, 100 years or so we reckoned, liveable, but appeared to have no-one occupying it at that time. It looked like it was being used as a holiday home, lots of books and games, but not much furniture. Guy and I were curious and set out to find some explanation behind this little cottages existence.
There was no letterbox in which we could place a letter of enquiry, so Guy began asking the locals! It didn't take very long to find a connection to the owner because as it turned out some of the locals in this area had used the little cottage to stay in themselves at one time or another! It was owned by a lovely couple who had bought it from within their family a long time previously and were now living down in the West Country. They allowed Scout and Cub groups to use it and various other people, but no-one was permanently residing in it!
It begged the question...."Do you want to sell it and if so how much for?" As it happened they were thinking of retiring the following year and were unsure whether they would live in the cottage themselves, sell it to a member of their family or sell it on the open market....it was a price that at the time we couldn't afford! I think we were disappointed but not surprised. We didn't hear anything more on the cottage, but walked past it often.
About a year later we were still looking for a place to move to, but nowhere was as pretty and unspoilt as Bledlow with a house to match our budget. Banks were as keen as ever to lend huge sums of money, and we now had access to a much larger mortgage if we wanted it! Shame we didn't have such easy access to a much larger income to pay for it! If we were going to move it had to be somewhere special and everywhere we liked was a stretch financially. Our friend Tim had been looking on the local planning website as he was doing some research for his own home extension and noticed the cottage had been granted "Full planning permission" for a rebuild, he mentioned it to us. We had longsince lost the contact number for owners, so Guy sent an email to the architect who had drawn up the plans. As luck should have it they were thinking of selling, so we all met up at our house to discuss the possibility of us buying the cottage over a cup of tea, then we all shook hands on the deal! No haggling, they named their price and Guy and I felt that we wouldn't want to be anywhere else! We planned to move about a year later in September 2007!
From this amazing little spot nestled in the Chiltern Hills you can see miles across the Oxfordshire plain.....it's gorgeous and it is a place, that as a young girl I could only have dreamed of living! It is peaceful country life! Well, maybe not when Guy's playing his drums......a huge bonus of having no neighbours!
