Hi. I thought I would put together a bit of a summary of what has happened this year and what is currently happening.
March/April 2018 – we saw a farm/smallholding for sale on an Orkney Island and on further looking realised that property was fairly cheap in this area. We travelled to Orkney at Easter for a week (Chris had his birthday there) and viewed it and a few other houses. None were quite what we wanted but it was a great experience, we had never been in that part of the country before. We also realised it was a completely different lifestyle there, to where we currently are and! that it was doable!
We carried on looking online, monitoring the Orkney area property sites and then just on a whim decided to look at Shetland. We saw an advert for a croft and house, owner occupied, which is a definite bonus. It looked lovely but as we had not yet sold our house we thought there was no point in even looking.
May 2018 – The croft had a closing date advertised of 31st May, we resigned ourselves to the fact that it had gone.
June 2018 – Our house sold, as in went under offer whilst they did/do all the necessary stuff as in survey, searches etc etc. A cash offer so we were presumptive in thinking it would go through quickly.
The croft came back on the market as it had not sold.
We really liked the croft in Shetland, so we booked Chris and his dad onto the overnight ferry from Aberdeen and arranged for them to go and view it, which they did and on coming back and discussing it, we decided to put an offer in via a solicitor.
We also went on holiday to Orkney again for a week, the original plan was to view houses again, but we didn’t think we needed to and also, there wasn’t really anything going we thought was right. We had been spoiled as the land on the croft was quite extensive. Before, we might have settled for a detached bungalow and a plot of land around it, now we had our eyes set on more.
The survey was carried out on our house.
July 2018
Our offer went in to the seller’s solicitor’s at the beginning of July. In the Scottish system (or Shetland) the offer is an actual document, not just an offer.
On the 6th July we received an email saying our offer was acceptable in principle, so we rejoiced!
Chris had an encounter with God which was very powerful and thought God was telling him he would give us the croft. We are now wondering if he meant something slightly different, a different place, a different timing maybe.
But! the very next day we then also we received word that our buyer was now unsure whether to continue with the purchase of our house because of the survey. He decided to send a builder around to have a look and quote him a price for damp proofing.
A builder came round and seemed very positive, then we didn’t hear anything, we presumed no news was good news about selling.
August 2018
We didn’t hear anything on the croft until the 2nd of August when we got an email marked urgent and a requested date of entry being the 31st August (or another mutually agreed date), which was a shock because we had heard nothing for just under a month. When I said we could not yet really give a date because our completion date had not yet been given. The seller of the croft withdrew his acceptance of our offer. On that same day.
The positive thing about this is that we contacted our buyer who confirmed the sale of our house was still going ahead and that they were just starting the searches.
Future…
So, here we are, a potted history of our moving story so far. We are now looking a bit further afield, possibly at Southern Ireland, whilst still keeping an eye on what is going on in Shetland, Orkney and the Highlands. We thought about France, but Chris would need to find work there and we think there would be more chance in Scotland or Ireland.
Also, we keep pushing, but we don’t want to go anywhere that we are not meant to be. So we keep asking God and seeking him but also pushing those doors and seeing what happens.
So we are moving out at some point, but currently don’t have a home to go to. So there is much more of the story to come. I am looking forward to this story unravelling every day and us learning to listen and be with God all the way. He has good plans…
The Shepherds Adventure 