The best of both worlds — the view from here

A year ago, we were living in the town. A nice enough town, with it’s own ‘on-Thames’ hypenated full name. We had lots of friends there, the boys were in a good school, a nip to the shops, the local deli, a trendy restaurant or the well-kitted out municipal park was easy, but somehow it didn’t feel quite right.

Fast-forward a year - and conveniently glossing over the frantic house-selling, house-buying/house-not-buying, house-renting debacle - we find ourselves in the wonderful West Oxfordshire countryside, minus a mortage and the convenient amenities but having acquired a beautiful place to live, a VW campervan, neighbours in the proper sense of the word, a forest on our doorstep and a brilliant little country town a mile away. Apologies if that sounds smug but we have totally and inadvertently lucked out and I still can’t quite believe it.

Our lives have changed immeasurably since we came here. Moving to the countryside was the best thing we did. We get that little skip in our stomachs each time we return home and I can honestly say, I don’t think any of us would give up on our little slice of countryside for anything right now.

And this morning’s quarterly farmers’ market is just one of the reasons why we have perma-grins on our faces. We enjoyed a sun-drenched amble round the stalls, spent far too much money on venison pie and Victoria plums and bumped into new friends - we’re almost starting to feel like locals.

Then it was off into Oxford where Spence’s band was playing for Oxfam as part of the Oxford Open Doors weekend. After the gig we caught up with good 'old’ friends and visited en masse one of those well-kitted out municipal parks, then stopped off for dinner in our favourite Oxford restaurant.

Best of both worlds eh?