We spent seven years looking for the right place.

We started in Mexico in 2018. We spent close to a year there, learning a landscape and a way of life that we loved but slowly came to understand wasn't quite the fit we were after.

It was the beginning of a habit we've kept ever since: staying somewhere long enough to actually know it, and being willing to say no.

From there we went to Canada. Three months, mostly moving between Alberta and British Columbia, trying to picture a life on that scale of land. Some days it felt very close.

In the end it wasn't the one either, and we were glad we'd taken the time to find that out on the ground rather than on paper.

Then Covid arrived and everything went quiet for a while. Plans sat on a shelf.

In hindsight the pause did us good. It gave us time to think about what we were actually looking for, and to notice which of our reasons had held up and which we'd quietly outgrown.

When we started again, it was in Portugal. We travelled through the country and eventually spent a year based in the north. It was beautiful, and for a long time we thought it might be it.

But something kept us looking, and we've learned by now to trust that feeling.

Which brings us to Somerset. It's the first place where the answer has come back quietly and consistently yes.

We haven't secured the land yet. We're actively looking, and honestly it might take a while. But for the first time in seven years we're looking in one place, and it's this one.