So I've been away from this blog for a while now, but I do have my reasons.....we moved. And by that I don't mean just to a different flat but from Plymouth to the Brecon Beacons. I had planned to do some posts about packing up our things and moving but I have to admit that I did get a little bit overwhelmed by it, even though we were just moving within Britain and I've never really gotten overwhelmed about moving before. I think part of the reason was that we had really set roots in Plymouth with a whole load of plans of places we wanted to go to and things we wanted to do, something I hadn't really done before. It was also our first home after getting married.
However, we were still excited by the prospect of exploring a new location and of my husband starting a job more in keeping with what he wants to do. Trying to focus mostly on that we packed up our flat, shoved it all into the back of a van, and headed north. Before it came to our move date we had been spending all of our free time researching what type of properties we could rent, what areas we would like to/ would be able to move into, and what types of jobs I'd be able to get. It was looking like we would have to rent an unfurnished property, which would have led to quite a big additional expense and I was also researching where we could buy secondhand furniture, but in the end we were able to find the furnished house (yes you read that right, we've been able to rent a house up here) to move into.
Due to the fact that we'd been a little bit sad about leaving our previous home I wanted to spend the first week or so getting this new house into feeling like our home. It's amazing how just putting up our books around the place made it feel like our space. Now that our nick nacks and pictures are everywhere it definitely feeling more cosy. I also spent that time sorting out our council tax, insurances, changes of addresses (why are there so many), and, of course, joining our local library.
And then there's all the new locations to find and explore, and I've already started putting together a list of possible places for us to go. It'll be especially good to get back into the mountains again as we're now right beside them and we also want to get back into wild swimming as well. From the basis research I've done so far, there seems to be quite a few opinions around us. The one thing we will miss though is the sea and it does feel a little strange to not be able to see it straight from our window anymore. However, it's not too far from us and there are lots of walks we can do there as well. I think we'll probably end up spending a lot of time there just to make sure we get our seaside fix. We should hopefully be able to get back to learning to surf again as well.
Another thing that was high on our list was to find out where we could get refills for our dry groceries and cleaning products, which we've been successful with thanks to the husband, and that search has meant we've also found some towns and villages with good looking pubs which could work well at the end of a walk to explore.
Now that we're all settled in I should hopefully be able to get back to blogging regularly again, this time with a Welsh flavour. I'm hoping to document all the exploring we get to do in this new area, though there is a possibility that when I finally get work our shifts might not match up again so I might have to do some of that exploring on my own. One thing we did feel bad about when it came to leaving Devon was that we didn't explore the area as much as we had intended to (a common issue I know), so we plan on making a real effort to not do that again here. There is a lot to see and, you never know, we might get to see some of it on a rain free day............not holding our breath though.
