The Yorkshire move - part 1: why move & why Yorkshire?

Because it's been going on for a while and I haven't been blogging it as it happens, I've now got a mind full of information straining to get out onto the page.
(and I know it's going to get out onto a screen, I can't help it - it's a page to me because I'm writing on it).

So, for the purposes of catch up. Here's what we've been doing for the past few months.......

(swirly music, mist, shimmering figures as we go back in time to 2000 and something.)

Louise and I were always confirmed city types, loving the city in general and Birmingham in particular. But having Molly and seeing the city turn into something a little too threatening and corporate for our liking we decided, after lots of what if conversations to seriously think about what we could do differently in our lives.

Perhaps the number one consideration was Molly and her education. Needless to say, the secondary school choices in inner city Birmingham are hardly the multitude of choice our esteemed leaders would have us believe. By the time she got to Year 7 we seriously doubted that we'd be able to find her a good place in a good school and bean pricing up private schools.
Now I hate the idea of sending Molly to private schools and object on all sorts of grounds. But if we were going to look at it, then it also seemed like a good idea to look around a see if we couldn't do better for her somewhere else.

But we also wanted out for any other number of reasons; a more peaceful life,chance to relax more, a return to a simpler culture, get away from the same monoculture existence of modern urban life (Starbucks on the corner, Gap down the road, HMV here, Waterstones there, the same chain stores lining the same streets all over the country in every city).

There was a brief flirtation with Ireland, but we decided against it.
(Cost, Liver damage)

After that it had to be Yorkshire. It's somewhere we've always loved. We honeymooned there. We know so much of it and felt more and more at home there each time we visited. And if it was going to be Yorkshire then the best place for us, as far as we could see, would be around York. It had everything we needed, access to big city, the coast, the moors and plenty of small satellite villages where our house money would go that little bit further.

So that was the why move & why Yorkshire, next came the final decision to go for it and quite possibly one of the worst days of my life.......
(oooh the suspense)