Downshifting Abroad

Diary of a Downshifter - Part 1

How it all started
This diary tells the ups and downs, triumphs and tragedies and daily routines of a typical overseas downshifting couple which grew into a downshifting family. All of it is true and it all began in November 1993 when my wife Anna and I left the UK for a small cottage in the Spanish hills. We had decided to get out of the rat race in the UK and become honey farmers.  The main reasons for leaving the UK were not that we were anti British, but just anti living in Britain. We believed firmly that we  were simply not being rewarded for effort in our jobs; the jobs themselves were boring (although decently paid); we dreaded Mondays; we dreaded Fridays because it was the weekend and time increased in speed dramatically and it would go in a flash and Monday would on us again; We dreaded Thursdays because that was the day before Friday and so it went on. Out on the streets, nobody seemed to respect anybody or anything and the decent people (and they were and still are the majority in the UK) had to shut up in case they offended someone. A glass of wine in a pub and a couple of beers required a mortgage and the cost of petrol to get to the pub required another. We were frazzled, overtaxed, totally fed up, powerless to do anything about it and knew that something had to change. In fact everything had to change.  We had always liked Spain – real Spain that is, not so much the Costas, although they too provide a very happy place to live for many Brits and other Northern Europeans. So we decided to go there and because we had two beehives in our garden and were therefore ‘experts’!, we decided to go abroad be commercial honey farmers. We were very naïve. Looking back now, I think that it would have been easier to build a space rocket and colonise the moon. But, something had to be done and so we did it. No plans – or rather nothing substantial in the way of planning, but we did go to evening classes in Spanish. That was our only practical preparation for what was to come, and thank God we did that. But we also did a few daft things in the way of preparation including going on a buying spree! We bought a stone sink, a dining room table, antique chairs and an antique sofa and a host of other equally useless junk that we then had to spend thousands getting to Spain, where none of it fitted. On a prior visit to Spain when we decide to buy the cottage there an expat said, ‘bring only what you can get in a suitcase plus your record collection’. We laughed, took no notice and have regretted it ever since.
On the 3^rd of November 1993, we set off from Lincoln in an ex military  Landrover and trailer, with a friend behind us driving a Luton van, both full of stuff most of which we would never need, and headed for Spain. Next week I describe ‘The Journey.’