Many British people dream of retiring and living by the sea, some make the practical decision to move closer to family and friends, but not many decide that the home of Vodafone UK would be their ideal destination. It has occurred to me before that we’re not most people. But, in its defence, the town of Newbury has more to offer than good mobile coverage and that’s why we’ve finally moved here after years of talking about it. The pandemic got in the way of our plans, as it has for so many people, but finally we’re here.
We’re renting a property as the purchase of our new house slowly trudges along. House selling and buying in England is still a long and frustrating process taking months, driving everyone to distraction along the way. Our current home looks a bit like a little box built in the 1960s, which isn’t that much different from our previous 1960s house, which, now I think about it, resembled a series of interconnecting boxes. I was concerned that we wouldn’t be able to fit all our belongings into this house and I wasn’t wrong. The expression “trying to get a quart into a pint pot” springs to mind. We have managed to hollow out a living area and set up our beds, but other than that the house is full to the rafters with stuff. Ironically, this box of a house has actually become a storage container.
It took at least a week to scrabble through our many boxes, take out what we needed and then repack all the less-than-crucial-items. We don’t seem to have an immediate need for lily vases, vintage typewriters or ice cream makers, but I’m sure our new house will be crying out for them. Fortunately, we have friends close by who very kindly offered up their garage to store our excess boxes, but I don’t think they were expecting 27 of them.
Now that the box management portion of our life is temporarily under control, we are finding time to explore our new surroundings. After village life, it’s such luxury to have everything on your doorstep and to be able to walk everywhere. I’m even planning to have my bike serviced and to start cycling about. It feels much safer to cycle around here than it did when we lived on the edge of a village on a winding, country road with people dashing along at great speed. There’s no dashing in the middle of a town.
One of the main attractions for me here, though, is the Kennet and Avon Canal, which starts in Reading, passes through the middle of Newbury and continues all the way to Bristol. Other local towns have restaurants, markets and cinemas, but not many also have a beautiful canal running right through the centre. The enthusiastic can walk, cycle or take a narrowboat along its 89-mile length, none of which am I currently planning to do.
A little community of houseboats is permanently moored here, which always strikes me as a very romantic way of life, but I don’t think there’d be room for the ice cream maker or the vintage typewriter. And what Jasper would think of it, I can’t imagine.
Hey, you’re no longer homeless! That must be a relief. I wonder if your Ottawa roots were secretly calling out to you when you shopped around for a new town and settled on one that has a canal through the middle. 🙂
I never thought of that. The love of canals obviously runs deep. Sadly, the Kennet and Avon will never freeze like the Rideau Canal in Ottawa. No skating for us.
Well, I guess the upside is that it will never be cold enough for that to happen. 🙂 Also, the canal here is like a wind tunnel in the winter — brrrr!
True. I might be nostalgic for skating on the canal, but you don’t see me in Ottawa in the middle of winter if I can avoid it!