‘Everything here shuts in the winter’
Joe Leech understands the urge to revisit the past. In 2020, the business coach, 50, his wife, Michelle Owen, 47, and their daughter, Liv Owen Leech, 9, relocated from Cheltenham in Gloucestershire to Dorset, where he had spent every summer of his childhood visiting his grandparents and enjoying a traditional bucket-and-spade break on the golden sands of Bournemouth.
When Covid-19 hit, the family was living in the Bristol suburb of Easton. But after most of Leech’s work went online, they decided to move on.
In 2020, they sold their four-bedroom terrace for £465,000, and paid £460,000 for a five-bedroom house in Bridport with three-quarters of an acre of garden.
But while Leech’s memories of Dorset are all about the summer, he admits winters are less enjoyable. “You really get the brunt of the weather and it is intense and visceral,” he says. “It is like being in a car wash.”
However, he has learned to love going running in the pouring rain and has come to terms with the inconveniences of life in the off-season. “Everything here shuts in the winter, and you have to be happy to be a home person for a few months, but I love it”, he says.
And although leaving Dorset, a county bereft of motorways, is a pain, there are compensations for being relatively cut off. “We consider not having a motorway a feature, not a bug,” he says. “It is difficult to get out of Dorset, but it is also difficult for other people to get here, and it is very quiet compared to Devon or Cornwall.”
Looking to make a new life
Nigel Bishop, of Recoco Property Search, says that at least half of the clients he helps relocate to Devon and Dorset have regularly holidayed in the area.
Most of these relocators are aged 55 to 65: “They are looking to make a new life while they are young enough and financially able to do so,” he says.
In Cornwall, Martyn Rohrs, the director of Rohrs and Rowe estate agents, agrees that a “very high” proportion of his incoming buyers first came to know the county through holidays.
He says the demographic has broadened from retirees to younger people who can mostly work from home in recent years.
If they are leaving more expensive parts of the country, they may be able to reduce their mortgage payments or buy a first property, but practical considerations are not the only motivation.
“For many, the idea of moving here permanently is not just practical; it is emotional: they already know the area, have happy memories here, and can picture themselves or their family being part of that lifestyle full-time,” he said.
