People are always asking about the plan. What will you do for work out there? Will you live there all year round? What will you do in the winter? Will you get a donkey?
The house sale should go through before Christmas, but we won’t be going out to Bulgaria until August 2011 due to work commitments and the need to save money for renovations. Hopefully, we will be able to get the builder doing some of the important stuff before we go out there – staircase, bathroom and plumbing are at the top of the list of priorities. Then, when we’re out there, we can focus on fitting a kitchen and redecorating everywhere. Being realistic, we expect to run out of money within a few months, but we should have finished the house by then. We can then return to the UK around the end of 2011/early 2012 for another 6 months or so of working to save up money to tackle the garden and turn the outbuilding into a guest cottage and studio. Luckily, I work in publishing, which is a very female dominated field – lots of maternity cover contracts if needed!
So that’s the immediate plan – for the first couple of years we’ll be flitting between the UK and Bulgaria as and when money runs out. In a few years time, when all of the work is done, we’ll be ready to move out there permanently. We do indeed plan to live there all year round. Being up in the mountains, winters are very cold and snowy but I plan to take full advantage and work on my skiing skills! And I’m looking forward to our first white Christmas. Summers are long and very hot so we’ll be spending lots of time working on our 1000m2 garden. We plan to have a nice big vegetable patch and herb garden and will add some more fruit trees to the ones already in the garden. Sadly there isn’t really the room for a swimming pool but there is a small holiday chalet complex about five minutes away and they have a pool. Think I’m going to have to make friends with the manager so we can use their pool…
In terms of work, once we’ve made the permanent move, I will probably do some freelance work. Eventually we want to run a B&B or artist holiday business using the guesthouse. The surrounding area is really beautiful and I’m sure that budding artists will find it a really inspiring place!
