Energy Saving Expert's Blog

Met the neighbours (only 3 of them, and 1 of those own the field – there’s no house).  One couple in particular have been very hospitable, and have had us in for tea and cakes. They have lots of knowledge of the area and have been very helpful. This bodes really well!!!

• I believe all the social challenges we face (healthcare, education etc) become academic if we’re all dead because of climate change
• The climate change skeptics might be right, but we can’t afford to assume they are
• I go skiing every year, knowing the travelling emits unnecessary CO2 which is bad for the environment
• I have children and I care that they grow up to ripe ages in a safe environment
• I don’t think we can stop the insatiable desire to excessively consume that has taken hold of so many of the world’s population – we will have to rely on technological advancements
• I’ve just bought a big dilapidated house in the country, and I want to make it as environmentally friendly as possible
• My head is full of unanswered questions and environmental dilemmas. I hope to resolve some of them by writing this blog

We’ve been looking for our “settle down” house for years and we’ve known why we’ve not found it: lack of geographical focus. We only knew we wanted closer to Wales and a reasonable London commute. This meant our search radius included Bath, Bristol, Oxford, Cheltenham, Reading etc; a huge area indeed, which meant we had very limited knowledge of the towns and villages where potential properties cropped up. Along with our other criteria: good schools, fairly rural, good pubs, hills and ideally a bit of land we were really up against it.

Then last week, a Rightmove alert caught my eye: a nice looking Victorian farmhouse “in need of renovation”. The place: Goring. A quick search told me there were excellent schools, the commute is under an hour and there’s hills aplenty. This is it! We had no intention of taking on a huge project, but we’ve seen enough places to know that we should take this opportunity whilst it’s there.