We have plenty of time on our hands. I love houses, I love dogs, and Neil saw the advert and thought that would suit us, so we went for the interview and we did our first housesit shortly afterwards and absolutely loved it. We were lucky enough to have a beautiful house and a dog that we absolutely fell in love with, and it carried on since there really, so we’ve done a few housesits now and have been lucky enough to have some really good ones and really enjoyed it.
The interview that we had was in depth but exactly what I would want if I was on the other side; so they’ve been extremely helpful, they’re always on the phone whenever we need them, and very supportive.
We’ve stayed in some wonderful places, in various parts of the country, it’s been very interesting, with a wide selection of houses that we’ve stayed in.
We were always going abroad on holiday and we’ve now found some wonderful places and it’s all the surrounding areas as well. We’ve stayed in Epping and down in places in Kent, and found some wonderful villages, and we get to walk, we get to do lots of exercise, and it’s a great experience.
We’re really getting to find out parts of the UK are beautiful and it really is wonderful.
We’re both pretty active, so we like walking a lot, and occasional 9 holes of golf, lots of reading, catching up on films, that’s another good thing when we’re at someone else’s house. We have been lucky enough to have a few tennis courts in the grounds, so we have been very luckily playing tennis; and the odd gym, as well, so we get the best of both worlds, country house and lovely to have pets and plenty of walking, it’s great.
The only downside is when you leave, because you do get quite attached to, well I certainly do, get very attached to the dogs, and you always have to leave quite abruptly because the farewell can’t be too long.
I suppose also you can say that if there’s a life you’ve always thought you might like, say for example, you’ve always been a city dweller and you think wouldn’t it be lovely to live in the countryside, it’s kind of a way of trying, a tester, so you get to try what it would be like to move out and experience country life and village life, so it’s a great experience from that point of view.