When we first started talking about an extended world tour – which was probably on our first date! – our plan was to stay in Bedfordshire until we retired and then sell the house and go travelling. When we got back we would find somewhere to buy in Devon, but Covid changed all that.

After a few months in lockdown we, like most of the world, realised it was feasible to work from home so we didn’t need to be close to an office. Debbie already had a home-based contract and Steve’s work could send him anywhere in the world so it didn’t really matter where we lived. That gave the opportunity to bring forward our plans to move to the coast and we made the most of it, moving to Devon in January 2020.

The drawback is that now we are on the brink of going travelling we have a house to deal with. We considered holiday letting. Many of the houses in the village are holiday lets but the problem is that we wouldn’t be close at hand to deal with issues and the house could be unoccupied for several months in the winter. We decided it was better to let it for residential use so have enlisted Freeborn’s Property Services to market and manage it and we are now on their web site as well as Rightmove and On The Market.

Ideally we would like to let it furnished, so that we don’t have to pay to store our furniture, but most tenants have their own furniture. In any case we will have to store our belongings so we have been frantically decluttering. For Debbie that has been selling loads of clothes on Vinted and for Steve loads of obsolete technology and computer bits on eBay.

Keeping the house tidy and ready to be viewed at short notice is a challenge but so far it is early days and we haven’t been over-run with potential tenants. The agent says that the rental market is different from selling and people only tend to start looking in the month before they want to move, so its early days yet.