The road to our Spanish dream began, oddly enough, on the floor of the loos at Worcester Services, it was the moment everything changed for us.
It was 12th July 2003, and there I was, heavily pregnant, collapsed on the tiles. People gave me a wide berth, like I had the plague. Can’t blame them really, not every day you see a woman crawling out of a toilet cubicle on her hands and knees.
I made it back to the car, and my husband rang for an ambulance. Next thing I knew, I was in the hospital, my clothes being cut off, and rushed into surgery. When I came round, my family was gathered around, they’d been told I might not make it.
But I pulled through. Turns out I’d had something called placenta percreta, basically, the placenta had burrowed through my womb wall, the baby had fallen into my stomach, and I was slowly bleeding to death. My body went into full shutdown, and I ended up having a hysterectomy.
After being discharged from hospital we made the decision. Life is short, there are no guarantees, it was time to stop talking and start doing.
We’d always chatted about moving abroad. My husband had this dream of building his own house, but trying that in the UK on our budget? Not a chance.
So we started looking in France. Found a beautiful bit of land where an old mill used to be, stunning spot, babbling brook, proper postcard stuff. But as we were leaving, we clocked a hand-painted sign: “Get the Brits out – you’re not welcome.” Right. France was off the list.
Just as we were mulling it over, my Mum and Dad casually announced they were moving to Spain. They were walking passed a property expo at a local hotel decided to nip in and ended up putting a deposit on a little house in Guardamar del Segura. As you do.
That changed everything. Suddenly, Spain was on the table. After plenty of road-tripping we found our spot, a lovely stretch of land halfway up a mountain on the Costa Blanca. Deal done!
Back in Blighty, we picked up two scruffy caravans for £100 a pop, one for sleeping, one for daytime living. That was our setup while we got cracking on building the house.
No Grand Designs cameras, just us, a dream, a couple of cheap caravans, 4 dogs and a mountain.
