As a child Amanda Armstrong used to holiday in Westbourne, a smart suburb just west of the centre of Bournemouth.
So when she and her husband Rodger started to seriously consider moving out of London she was keen to revisit those happy memories.
Making the move not only allowed the couple to live the coastal lifestyle both had long dreamed of.
But they have also more than doubled the size of their home, saving a six figure sum in the process.
Amanda and Rodger got together in 2014 and married in 2016. Between them they have four now grown up children, and they shared Amanda’s “tiny, one-and-a-half bedroom” cottage in Hampstead Garden Suburb with their Patterdale terrier, Baxter.
Both are self-employed — Rodger, 57, runs a business consultancy, while Amanda, 56, runs Bijou Recruitment — which meant nobody could tell them where they had to live.
And so, in August 2019, before the great pandemic-inspired exodus to the coast, the couple sold the circa 700 sq ft cottage for £650,000 and bought a three bedroom triplex in a converted Victorian house, which measures 1,800 sq ft. It cost £450,000.
“It is literally beside a path which leads to the beach, and we can be there in eight minutes,” said Amanda.
This access to the coast was a boon when lockdown hit. The well-publicised crowds who flocked to Bournemouth’s golden sands during 2020 tended to converge on the town centre beaches leaving Amanda and Rodger’s stretch mercifully peaceful for walks with Baxter.
Clearly, being separated from their families was painful — although that would have been the case even if they had remained in London. But Amanda said that the pandemic has certainly delayed her plans to get involved with the local community.
“We were just getting to the point where we had started meeting people, and things had started opening up when the pandemic started,” she said. “It felt like we were curtailed at just the wrong moment, and it did feel very solitary at times.”
To counteract that Amanda has taken a part time job in one of Westbourne’s fashion boutiques, which she has found a great way to meet locals.
“On the few occasions I have been back to the suburb I have not been able to believe how I put up with things like all the traffic,” she said. “Here people are much more considerate, they are not in such a hurry, and it is far less stressful. Would I go back if I could? Absolutely not, I have not missed London anything like as much as I thought I would.”
