Making a move

With her "Amateurs' Guide to Relocating Effortlessly" Chryselle has written a humorous account of their search for a rented flat, their experiences with letting agents and the twists and turns that beset their move.

The first visits getting our bearings.
The drive from Maidstone to High Wycombe either way took us a little under two hours with traffic on the motorway, which was not something we looked forward to.

The sensible thing to do was to set up as many viewings as possible in a day to make the most of our trip and that is what we did.

On our first trip into town, we tried to get our bearings right we got to the town centre and walked about getting a feel for the place and wondering whether we would like living here.

It was a Tuesday and the market was on. The High Street was a beehive of activity with people milling about, checking the stalls and shopkeepers calling out their wares.

At a newsagent, we asked for a local paper to get an idea of the property market and were given the Bucks Free Press.

Although we had been to a couple of letting agents already, the paper was an invaluable source of information about smaller letting agents and allowed us to compare prices across agents.

Another important visit for us was to the library. Being members of the one at Maidstone, we looked forward to more hours with books at the Wycombe library which pleasantly enough, was easily spotted.

My husband, an avid classical music fan (he plays the violin), was especially pleased to learn that there was a separate section for music on the first floor.

Browsing through the books also gave us an idea of the wide variety of people that lived in the area the book sections are always a dead give-away of a town's demographic profile!

With easy access to London, Oxford and Birmingham, Wycombe seemed like a nice place to make a home.

A roof over our heads.
Looking for a house or an apartment wasn't going to be so pleasant though.

Being new to the area, we had no idea of what was a "good" place to live in.

And because we didn't know anybody else, it was difficult trying to judge for ourselves the neighbourhood, the local transportation, accessibility to conveniences, safety and security.

Most letting agents just take you to the house in question they usually don't give you more information about the neighbourhood, even when you ask.

It was left to us and our instincts to choose. We saw several nice houses in not-so-nice neighbourhoods the houses by themselves were nice, but the neighbourhood was either unkempt, deserted or didn't look very secure.

There were other houses that we saw in the little villages on the outskirts of Wycombe, but again, being new to the area, we were not in a position to judge how far they were from the town centre, bus routes etc.

The rent stayed largely the same whether the apartment was far away or closer to the town centre.

Even more surprisingly, furnished and unfurnished apartments both cost the same, although one would have expected otherwise.

Overall, High Wycombe seemed to be a little more expensive than Maidstone.

In general, a two bedroom furnished apartment in High Wycombe costs about £75-£100 more each month than in central Maidstone.

It was going to be an expensive proposition, this move, but having got a job here and deciding on the relocation, there was no going back now.

Hopefully the advantages would far outweigh any such drawbacks, and we would look back on our decision without any regrets.

Anyway, 11 houses later, we finally decided on an apartment on Amersham Hill.

We seemed to have the best of all worlds.

The apartment was furnished, had a garage, overlooked a pretty little garden, was quiet, seemed secure and best of all, was within stone's throw of the church, railway station, town centre and High Street.

It seemed too good to be true!

The clue is in the "High".
The only disadvantage seemed to be that the climb uphill from the station takes your breath away, literally.

By the time we climb to the house, an oxygen mask is in order.

Or perhaps it's only my out-of-shape muscles protesting against this imposition.

I console myself by saying that this might be a great way to lose weight for free and it may only be a matter of time before I can run up the hill in an attempt to train for the next marathon.

Pipe-dreams? Maybe!

When we once commented on the hills, one of the letting agents we met said, "The clue is in the High' in High Wycombe", and of course, she was right!

Moving day.
It's been a few weeks since we've moved into the area our worldly possessions neatly packed into boxes and driven away by strong men in a removals truck.

Hiring professional movers may be expensive, but they are a big help getting things into boxes and carrying them away for you.

Of course, sometimes they also pack things they aren't meant to, but that's a different story altogether.

The movers however, do not help you unpack.

They leave the boxes all over the house, take their cheque and move on.

It is left to you to look at each other over the mountain of possessions and figure out which box contains what.

The unpacking took us a while and hopefully it's just a matter of time before we get used to having things stored differently than our last house.

And now...
The last of the boxes have been unpacked, dismantled and stacked in the garage for the time being.

The books have been placed in their shelves, the stationery rack assembled in the second bedroom that we plan to use as a guest bedroom/study.

Bits and bobs find homes for themselves although we never seem to have enough storage space.

We test the appliances and are relieved to find them all in working order.

The heating system is new to us and we're still trying to work it out. The first bill should tell us if we are doing it right or not!

In our first week, we took in two trips to London and with the frequent trains we didn't have to worry, for once, about missing the last one home. We walked around, explored Wycombe to get our bearings. We joined the library and brought books home. We walked up and down the hill. And survived. We went to church.

We explored some of the superstores in the area and driving around showed us some more.

We've just been to the Wycombe Museum and enjoyed the various exhibitions that are currently on. We've even met our neighbours, which is unusual for an apartment building, and liked them.

In all it has been an eventful first few weeks in a new town.

My husband is excited about his new job.

As for me, I am looking forward to reading, writing and quickening my pace on the hill.