If you’d have asked her a few years back if she’d ever leave her home town of London to move up North, giving up her friends and her job and saying goodbye to the buzz of big city life, Vicky Chandler would probably have laughed in your face.
But the pandemic turned her into an accidental London leaver, complete with a husband, a dog, and a house, and although the transition to life in North Yorkshire hasn’t been easy, today Vicky wouldn’t go back if you paid her.
“I was born and brought up in London, it was all I had ever known, and I was – and am – a really proud Londoner,” she said. “But now that I just go back and visit I think that I see more of it than when I used to live there and I took it for granted.”
When Vicky, 31, a freelance writer and editor, met her now-husband Matt Lockwood, 45, she was working for a London magazine company, hanging out in Soho after work, and spending her weekends with her close knit group of friends around Penge, where she owned her own one bedroom flat.
Things changed when she met restaurant owner Matt at an awards ceremony in 2019. He lived in Harrogate and they began long distance dating. When the pandemic started Vicky was sent home from work and decided to head to Harrogate to stay with Matt in his two bedroom terrace. “I thought it would be for a couple of weeks,” she said. “But I never left.”
When lockdown restrictions were lifted Vicky was recalled to the office two days a week. She gritted her teeth and began an epic commute – each journey took three and a half hours each way and cost her around £120.
“Then they started to want us back in the office four days a week,” said Vicky. “I couldn’t do it, and so I gave up to go freelance. I never wanted to be freelance, but it was a sacrifice that I had to make.”
Another challenge was leaving her friends behind at home – reading about their plans and meet ups on the group WhatsApp but unable to join in. “I didn’t know anyone when I moved up and we couldn’t go out and socialise anyway,” said Vicky. “I don’t have children, which I think is an easy way to make friends at the school gates, and it was a real struggle until I started going to the gym and met people through that. I slowly build friends up.”
Things got tough enough that Vicky started to doubt her Yorkshire staying power but a burgeoning group of local friends helped. Then her parents decided to move up north to join her and her best friend from home moved to Leeds, and suddenly life started getting better.
Last year Vicky and Matt sold their respective homes and clubbed together to buy a three bedroom stone-built semi in Knaresborough, four miles east of Harrogate, which they share with Pickle, their sprocker spaniel. Vicky’s one bedroom flat fetched £285,000, and the new house cost £465,000.
She has also discovered that there is plenty to do in Yorkshire, with the galleries, theatres, and restaurants of York, Manchester, and Leeds within easy reach. “And when there is something like a really great exhibition we make the effort to go and see it because we are not so spoiled for choice,” she said.
Vicky has also seen the benefits of a quieter life. “My mental health has improved significantly,” she said. “In London I was running on full steam – I just never stopped. Now I am a lot calmer and I very much enjoy being at home. I feel like I have got a home. My flat was very much just a base to eat and sleep.”
And living in a small town has compensations. “My friends still think that London is the be all and the end all, but the community here is so much better,” she said. “In London I didn’t know my neighbours, here everyone stops to chat and they are so helpful. I really like getting to know all the café owners’ names and seeing the same people in the pub.”
