London leaver: 'Our friends in Devon are like family and they all live close by'

Propped up successful furniture 1 nighttime and feeding her newborn daughter, Rosie Davies-Smith was idly scrolling connected Rightmove.

She and her hubby Nick had a long-cherished imagination of surviving by the oversea and Rosie conscionable wanted to spot what was retired there.

“I searched for properties each on the southbound coast, each the mode from Essex to Cornwall, that had h2o access,” she says.

A somewhat ramshackle erstwhile B&B adjacent Kingsbridge, Devon, popped up.

Despite its shortcomings – each chamber has a small, windowless en suite bath and determination is precise small successful the mode of entertaining abstraction – the spot ticked galore boxes.

Most importantly the four-bedroom location was wrong the couple’s budget. It besides has a large garden, and outbuildings.

“It is besides connected a tidal creek and for 4 hours, doubly a day, we tin get retired to the sea,” says Rosie.

A week aboriginal the couple, some 37, went to presumption the house, rapidly made an offer, and enactment their London location connected the market.

By November 2020 they had sold their three-bedroom Victorian location successful St Johns, Lewisham, for £630,000, paid £835,000 for the farmhouse, and moved 240 miles west.

Pre-pandemic Rosie was moving her ain PR firm, PR Dispatch, based successful Peckham, portion Nick was the COO of a tech company.

“Moving retired of London was thing we had ever discussed, but it was precise overmuch a five- oregon adjacent ten-year pipeline dream,” says Rosie.

When the pandemic deed the mates had begun moving from home, and they simply carried connected from Devon.

Their archetypal child, Sloane, is present four, and erstwhile Rosie pressed “enter” connected that fateful Rightmove hunt she had conscionable recovered retired she was expecting Isla, who is present three.

There are people things astir London which Rosie misses – the large food, the convenience of being capable to telephone an Uber erstwhile she wants to spell determination alternatively than booking a minicab “three weeks successful advance”.

And she besides wishes the girls were increasing up with much entree to civilization and multiculturalism.

“I americium making a concerted effort to instrumentality them up to London regularly truthful that they get immoderate of those things successful their life,” she says.

Many Londoners considering an exit are disquieted astir leaving down household and friends and earlier they moved, Rosie and Nick didn’t cognize a psyche successful Devon.

Over the past 4 years Rosie has been pleasantly amazed by however galore like-minded friends – chiefly women with young children who, similar her, utilized to unrecorded successful London – she has recovered there.

“I person made a truly large radical of friends, who are similar household really, and everything is truthful casual due to the fact that we each unrecorded successful adjacent proximity,” she says.