Pastures New

On October 2^nd last year the PDG and I moved home, leaving the bustling West of London suburb of Shepperton for rural Norfolk, about 150 miles to the North east. We had actually been planning the move for a few years. Our terraced house in Shepperton had been our home for 36 years, ever since we were married, and we were very happy there. It was not, however, very wheelchair friendly, particularly upstairs, where the PDG couldn’t access one of the bedrooms, and increasingly found the bathroom a struggle to get in to.

Our old house on the day we left

This situation was not going to improve so we resolved to look for a home which would ideally be on one floor, and where all parts of it would be accessible to a wheelchair user. Our plan was to start looking when my year as President of Shepperton Aurora Rotary Club finished, at the end of June. At the beginning of June we put our house on the market, and to our surprise it sold within a couple of weeks. The race was on, then, to find somewhere to move to before our buyers lost interest. We wanted to move to a bungalow, but there was no way we could afford one around Shepperton. They were in such short supply, and demand was so great, that prices were way too high for us.

A typically unaffordable bungalow in Shepperton (picture from web)

So we had to look elsewhere. The PDG has a sister in Essex, so we started looking at properties in that area, but a three day property hunting tour in July failed to locate anything within our price range that we particularly liked. Whilst there were plenty of bungalows for us to look at, most of them were not very accessible. For instance, several had steps up to the front door. Many also had gravel driveways leading to the front door. So regardless of how nice the house was inside, we often had major problems just getting in. Often we found rooms to be very small, and with narrow doorways through which a wheelchair could not pass.

Essex

Then we had a revelation, we discovered that since 2003, new buildings were required to have doorways wide enough for wheelchairs. Armed with this knowledge, in early August we took another 3 day tour, this time concentrating on Suffolk and Norfolk, where there was more choice, and prices were cheaper. We saw some beautiful properties, but which were too small for us, or not in a good  location, and by day two we were getting demoralised. We had just looked at a property in Swaffham which had everything we needed. Access was good, doorways were wide, but it was just dull and uninspiring. It was on a big housing estate and seemed more suburban than the house we were moving from.

Wide doorway

As we drove away from the Swaffham property we both wondered whether we would ever find anything to get us enthused. Our next viewing was about 7 miles away, in a village we had never heard of, called Saham Toney. It was a newly-built bungalow and we weren’t at all sure it would be suitable. In our experience, new-built housing estates tended to be too tightly packed, with small houses and little space around them. When we arrived at Japonica Lodge, I was immediately impressed with it. Here is a property with presence, I thought. Although we didn’t say so at the time, we both had the same positive feeling about it. We parked on the wide driveway and walked straight into the wide hallway, across the threshold which was perfectly level. The bungalow was a one-off build, not part of an estate, and was beautifully finished in our opinion. It had big rooms, and a pleasant garden overlooking a windmill.

Village sign

On our way to our next appointment we both agreed that Japonica Lodge was by far the best we had seen so far and we were unlikely to find anything better, so we phoned the estate agents and put in an offer, which was accepted. So that was that. All that remained was to tie up all loose ends, pack up our house and move to Norfolk, which occurred a couple of months later. Two months should allow us plenty of time to prepare, but as the leaving date approached, everything seemed to be happening too quickly. I managed to meet up with some of my family before we moved, to say farewell, but we didn’t manage to see all our friends face to face before we went. We have resolved to go back to Shepperton periodically to catch up with old friends.

Japonica Lodge

Our new address means that we can no longer attend Rotary meetings at Shepperton Aurora, so we have transferred our membership to the Rotary Club of Watton and District, the nearest club to our new home. It is an evening club, a new experience for us, and meets less than a mile away, at the Hare and Barrel pub in Watton. The other interesting thing about them is that until now they have been a male-only club, so having the PDG in their midst will be a new experience for them. Watch this space!

The Hare & Barrel