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As soon I wake up in the morning, I fling open the doors,” says Phillipa
Cherryson. “I take the horse out and ride straight to the hills. You can
walk for 30 miles without crossing a road or seeing another person. In the
evening, we walk up the mountain and watch the sunset.”
Home, to Cherryson, 36, and David Steers, 48, is Rhyd Fawr, a 15th-century
farmhouse nestling in a bowl in the Black Mountains. The house is remote,
surrounded by 23 acres of meadows and woodland, and backs directly onto the
Brecon Beacons national park. “It is like being in the middle of nowhere,”
says Cherryson. “We can hear nothing but skylarks in the summer, and can’t
see any lights at all at night. I wouldn’t live anywhere else in Britain.”
For the couple, finding the property was the culmination of a 10-year quest,
driving up and down the A40 every weekend, to find the perfect place:
somewhere they could really get away from it all, with no street lights,
just stars, no traffic, just sheep, and definitely no near neighbours.
Cherryson and Steers are not alone in their desire for solitude. More
househunters are heeding the call of the wild and looking to live somewhere
defined not by its postcode but by its grid reference. As the southeast
becomes more built-up, and even rural towns and villages expand, the demand
for remote properties is increasing.
Once, the value of a house would decrease the further away it was from
civilisation; now the reverse is often true. The better the view of hills
and expanses of sky, the more you pay.
The couple, who run a media consultancy, bought the four-bedroom farmhouse,
between Crickhowell and Hay-on-Wye, for £650,000 four years ago. They
spotted the property on the internet and leapt into their car; as soon as
they saw it, they offered the asking price.
Rhyd Fawr was perfect: a country house with the homely comforts of an Aga and
satellite broadband as well as great, sweeping views of the Welsh hills, it
has a cluster of period outbuildings that are home to two horses, two
donkeys and three dogs, as well as two cats who live in the barn. “We saw
hundreds of properties,” says Cherryson, “but there was always something
wrong. One might be in the middle of nowhere, but was surrounded by private
land, so you were limited as to where you could walk; or perhaps the
outbuildings had been sold off, so the neighbours were too close; or there
was traffic noise, which we hate; or, quite simply, the house would be too
dark and poky.
“Here, we are 20 minutes’ drive from Hay-on-Wye,” she continues, “yet we can
also walk out of our back door straight into wilderness of mountain and
moorland. It does your soul good, but you will need a four-wheel drive in
winter.”
Even this is no longer isolated enough for the couple, however. They are now
selling up – for £1.15m – and heading to rural France to be “total hermits”
in the wild and empty Cévennes national park, where they will be an hour and
a half’s drive from Montpellier.
A similar desire to get away from it all drove Chris and Alma Rough to leave
the urban sprawl of Fife, a bustling region of about 300,000 people in
central Scotland, for the open countryside in the far north of the country.
They bought a two-bedroom former croft and outbuildings near the village of
Talmine for £182,500 and moved in with their handful of hens last summer.
“We have stunning views overlooking the Kyle of Tongue,” says Alma, 54. “Our
closest neighbours are a quarter of a mile away.”
The nearest Tesco is a 140-mile round trip, which the couple do every few
weeks, but, according to Alma, this has been easier to adjust to than the
extreme wind and rain. Nevertheless, she says, the move has brought a sense
of inner peace.
But why this desire for such splendid isolation? The answer, according to the
Campaign to Protect Rural England (CPRE), is simple. “More and more of us
are looking for tranquillity,” says Shaun Spiers, its chief executive. “It
is about getting back to nature and enjoying a slower pace of life. Tranquil
areas are shrinking and fragmenting because of the remorseless growth in
road traffic and flying. So this desire is going to get ever more acute.”
But where can you go if you want to be far from the madding crowd? Last year,
the CPRE carried out research into the most tranquil areas in England,
drawing up a
map that ranks places – from dark red for towns and cities to rich green for
deep countryside. Not surprisingly, London and the southeast came out as
the least tranquil (although Cheshire is fairly noisy, too). The northeast
was the most peaceful – with Northumberland the quietest county, followed by
Cumbria and North Yorkshire.
George F White, an estate agency with four offices in the rural northeast,
estimates that it gets only six to eight truly remote properties a year,
from farmhouses high up in the Cheviots, near the Scottish borders, to
cottages in the heart of the Northumberland national park or elsewhere in
the countryside. They report “phenomenal” interest any time such a property
comes up for sale.
Houses that are both remote and derelict are often sold at auction, but even
here, bargains are becoming increasingly rare. Such properties may have a
low guide price, but it only needs a rival bidder to decide it is their
dream house, too, and prices start to rocket.
When the “for sale” board first went up outside Littlewood Farm, a Grade
II-listed, three-bedroom farmhouse and outbuildings set in about 50 acres,
in the north Pennines, two years ago, the agents were, as they put it,
“deluged” with calls. More than 360 brochures were sent out before the
£180,000 property went to auction, at which point two buyers, one from
Gloucestershire and the other with local connections, slogged it out. The
“local” eventually bought it for £302,000.
“People are drawn to remote properties more than ever,” says Hugh Fell,
managing partner of George F White, based in Alnwick, in Northumberland
(01665 603231; www.georgefwhite.co.uk
). “The downside of remote living is rapidly disappearing. Broadband and
satellite communications allow people to work from home, and improvements in
services technology, such as domestic wind turbines, mean remote living is
more viable.
“The other issue was always the weather, but we don’t seem to have the same
hard winters as 20 years ago, when you would have been snowed in for a
couple of weeks.”
As the example of Littlewood Farm shows, such seclusion comes at a price.
Where once you could snap up a bargain up in the hills or a farmhouse on the
moors for the price of a terraced house in Hull, you will pay a premium for
the privilege.
Jeff Williams, a partner of McCartneys, an estate agency with 17 offices in
the Welsh Marches, says prices there have risen on average 15% in the past
three years for rural properties, and by as much as 25% for a remote
farmhouse in a scenic location. McCartneys (01497 820778; www.mccartneys.co.uk
) in Hay-on-Wye is auctioning a beautiful, if battered, farmstead at the
foot of the Black Mountains, 3½ miles from Talgarth, this Thursday, with a
guide price of £300,000.
Those looking in remote areas are also a different sort from the brooding
misanthropes, misfits and hippies who snapped up remote properties 20 years
ago. “Buyers are much more affluent,” says Roger Punch, a director of Stags’
Plymouth office. “They are invariably successful people. Ten years
ago, people were turned off by properties that were awkward to get to or a
bit cut off. Nobody would want to get on a ferry, then drive up a track that
might be inaccessible for half the year. Now there is a rush of people every
time one comes up for sale.”
Nor do they all want to live in the wilderness full time. Improved transport
links have brought the countryside closer to the cities, and Punch, like
many agents, has noticed a growth in the number of “part-time hermits”,
looking for weekend solace rather than a permanent exit from the rat race.
Andrew Smith, 42, is just such a part-time hermit. From Monday to Friday,
Smith, a lawyer, spends 12 hours a day at his desk in the City before
heading home to the five-bedroom townhouse in Wandsworth, south London, that
he shares with his wife, Susie, and four children. But whenever possible at
the weekend, he jumps into his 4WD and heads to his house, two miles down a
bumpy track in the wilds of Dartmoor.
“The nearest neighbours are about a mile away,” says Smith, who bought the
house, 10 miles from Okehampton, 10 years ago for about £250,000. “It is a
wonderful bolt hole for getting away from the pressures and stresses of
working in the City. It is where I can completely relax.”
According to Michael Fiddes, head of Strutt & Parker’s rural division,
this booming demand for Castaway-style residences, coupled with spiralling
property prices in southwest England, has led to “the reemergence of
Scotland, particularly the Scottish Highlands, where people are buying
properties not for their sporting potential, but their remoteness – and one
can see what values have achieved in the Highlands”.
This is backed up by a study published last year by Communities Scotland,
which found that of the 30,000 holiday homes in the country, 47% were in the
most isolated areas.
Fiddes suggests that those who want wilder shores should look to the islands
off the west coast of Scotland and Ireland. “We all have increasingly
intense working environments,” he says. “So to find a place, wherever it may
be, where you can completely switch off has enormous appeal.”
However, buyers opting for a new life in a far-flung corner of the British
Isles should become more self-sufficient, he warns. “You need to be more
practical when you are living in a remote spot. A little knowledge of first
aid and electrical wiring, and the ability to nail down any wayward roof
tiles, will be far more handy than the number of the local takeaway or the
time of the last Tube.” Rhyd Fawr is for sale for £1.15m with
Parrys; 01873 858990; www.parrysproperty.co.uk
Fleeing the madding crowd – and what to do when you get there
If you want to escape the sirens and street lights for dark skies in the
deepest countryside, look up the most tranquil spots in England at www.cpre.org.uk
.
Contact all the estate agents in your target area and stay in regular contact.
Truly remote properties rarely come to the market. If you spot your perfect
property, then you can always try writing to the owner to ask if they would
be happy to sell – for a premium.
In the Sticks is a quarterly magazine that targets the wannabe hermit, with
150 rural properties for sale in each issue; 01434 382680; www.inthesticks.com
.
Don’t rely on sat nav – you’ll need to brush up on your Ordnance Survey
mapreading, as well as your first-aid and handyman skills, in case of
blocked gutters and wayward roof tiles.
To test the broadband coverage in the area, visit www.btbroadbandoffice.com
and type in the postcode or telephone number. Other websites to try include www.virginmedia.com,
www.adslguide.org and www.broadbandchecker.co.uk
.
Many remote properties will be in need of serious modernisation. Remember that
most will not have mains services, so think hard about what it takes to be
completely self-sufficient – you’ll need to run a generator, bore down for
water and install a septic tank or mini sewage plant before you can do so
much as take a bath or put the kettle on for a cup of tea.
