A couple who traded renting a noisy London flat for owning a home in the countryside say there is a better quality of life outside the city.
Tori Halman, 31, and her boyfriend Rob Overall, 30, moved to Cheshire last year after almost a decade in the capital and haven’t looked back since. The pair say that they are especially happy to leave behind the noise, crime, rodents, and traffic since opting for the quiet life. Tori was born and raised in Cheshire but, in 2015, she moved to London to do a master’s degree at City University. After getting her diploma, she continued to live with friends in the capital to help with her career in PR.
She said: “I lived in a student flat share with three girls which was an absolute hovel. It was a tiny flat and my bedroom was also the living room. We were broken into once and had literally everything stolen. There were lots of mice. It was chaos.”
Then Tori met boyfriend Rob, and the pair rented a noisy flat together in Clapham for around £1,500pcm. The couple then decided to go backpacking for nine months in South America, which is when they started debating whether or not they should move back to London.
Tori added: “We weren’t really making the most of London and all its amazing bars. It seemed pointless for us to spend all this money just to drive out to go on a hike every weekend. We sat in traffic leaving London pretty much every morning for a year. It just wasn’t conducive to our lifestyle at all.
“We hadn’t decided on Cheshire at that point, we just knew that we didn’t want to be in London. We had looked around what we could get in the commutable areas around the city but it wasn’t very inspiring.
“We needed somewhere that would be a relatively quick and cheap commute, but where our house, mortgage, coffee, gym, everything would be more affordable.”
Last summer, they took the plunge and bought a four-bedroom, £650,000 house in the village of Winterley, near Sandbach, in August. Tori works from home full time while her partner Rob, who is a data engineer, travels to London one day per week.
The commute from their new home to Euston takes about two hours total using the local train station in Crewe. Since they got to the countryside, the couple have joined lots of clubs and say they have begun making friends in the north.
Overall, Tori says that they are both thrilled with the decision and feel safer, as well as having a better work-life balance. She said: “We lived in a very busy area, and it was very noisy. There were lots of graduates out partying until the early hours and I found it very hard to switch off.
“I left work and I was still in the hustle and bustle of everything. Since moving, when I close my laptop I feel very detached from my working life. We often forget to lock the door, we are always coming back from a dog walk and we have left the back door wide open.
“There is definitely a more relaxed attitude. In London I didn’t always like walking home. If I stay here alone overnight then I feel totally safe, which is really nice.”
Looking back, Tori says the only thing she misses about London is the food, adding that she loved being able to step out of her door and get any cuisine. But, she says the move was worth it for the increased space they now have- which allowed them to get a Labrador puppy called Inca.
She added: “The main issues with London are price and space. Most of our friends are leaving London because they are being priced out. We would have been able to buy in London, but we would have had to sacrifice a lot of things. Being able to have a garden and a dog and to grow some vegetables was just not really within our reach in London.”
Tori is now part of a society called Women in PR which is trying to show people that you can have a good career outside of London. The campaign aims to highlight not only the benefits of remote working, but that there are great media industries in northern cities such as Manchester.
She said: “There is always the fear that we have massively narrowed our career pool. We got lucky that in our current jobs we can work remotely. People need to know that they can have a great quality of life outside of London.”
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