Postby masterob » Thu Dec 11, 2014 8:19 pm
Well, after 10 years and 5 months living in Spain ( not intending that to sound like a prison sentence!) we have just returned permanently to live in the UK. We have been back just two weeks and so far, so good. Why have we upped sticks?
We moved to Spain a couple of years after my retirement. We sold up in London and bought in Spain. Hindsight is wonderful, probably not the wisest decision. The first few years were exciting and the idiosyncrasies of the Spanish ways of doing things was tolerable and, at times rather entertaining. Over the passage of time we started to find them irritating, the power cuts, the unreliability of the town water supply etc we found annoying. Perhaps that was a sign of old age grumpiness!
The final straw was the loss of UK television earlier this year. Not the fault of Spain and not the "end of the world" but sufficient for us to sit down and ask ourselves " what Spain had to offer and did we really want to spend our remaining years in Spain?" We concluded that the only thing Spain had to offer us was the weather and even that was was for only part of the year. We loved the winter day times - the nights in a poorly insulated house were a different matter. The summer months were becoming very unpleasant and we seemed to spend the time in partial " hibernation".
Our conclusion was to sell up and return to the UK! This is where our decision to buy in Spain back in 2004 proved to be our undoing. With little prospect of finding a buyer fairly quickly we opted to rent our house and to rent in the UK. Fortunately we found reliable tenants (fingers and toes all crossed) and have found a house to rent here in the UK which meets exactly what we wanted.
Of course it is very early days but everything is going to plan. Since we left all that time ago the service offered by the Utility Companies, the local Council and by Shops seems to have improved immeasurably. Delivery times etc are all adhered to and the choices in the shops and supermarkets leave us feeling like children in a toy shop!
Our families and friends are delighted to have us back and we no longer have the problem (of our own making) of not being fully conversant with the local lingo!
I do not want this to sound as a "bad Spain, wonderful UK" sort of post. We have no regrets in moving to Spain and for the most part, enjoyed our time there but we believe we have made the right decision in returning to the UK and no that isn't trying to convince ourselves! Although in excellent health at present we did not relish in our mid seventies falling into poor health away from family in a country where our mastery of the language was far from good ( our fault).
At the end of the day it is a very personal decision!
ps. overwhelmed by the 200 or more TV chanells Sky provide with none of that reliance on a variable broadband service from Telefonica!
pps. It's adios Andalucia and I wish all you regulars on ADC all the best.