We've given the Stanpit exterior a bit of a makeover, with a bit of help from local company Farrow and Ball of course!

Thanks to Simon's hard work over the Easter weekend, our Dorset pad has now got a smart front door, and a new gate too.

The door was a rather bright turquoise when we moved in, but  a coat or two of Farrow & Ball's Downpipe has added a touch of coastal chic!  Just the window sills to paint, and a new house number to put up now.. (sorry Simon!)

Stanpit Marsh - a nature reserve walk with a smuggling past

Yesterday Hamish the dog and I headed through the recreation ground opposite our house and into the Stanpit Marsh nature reserve for the first time on a very cold, but sunny day.

Stanpit was listed in the Domesday book as Stan Peta, meaning two estates with meadows, and the marshes were produced by the Rivers Stour and Avon meeting the saltwater of Christchurch Harbour. It's now one of the largest salt marshes in the country and a site of Special Scientific interest with 14 rare or endangered species of plants growing there (so be careful where you plant your boots!).

I haven't seen my camera since the move, but this view has pushed me into emptying all of the cupboards again to try and find it.. An iphone just doesn't do it justice!

Stanpit Marsh is so much more beautiful than its name implies.
It has been maintained to protect the birds that like to nest in its reeds, and the firmer ground is grazed by ponies, so you need to keep dogs on a lead.

Follow the lovely circular stroll from the recreation ground through the marshes and along the river, looking out over Hengistbury Head and the Mudeford Beach Huts one the way out, and Christchurch Priory on the way back. You will cross Baileys Bridge, which takes you over Mother Siller's Channel, named after 18th century smuggler Ma Seller, the landlady of the Ship in Distress pub (see yesterday's post). The channel used to lead to the back of her pub so it was a useful 'trade' route!

The walk only takes half an hour or so but be sure to take your wellies at the moment!

Exploring our new local pubs in Christchurch

What is it exactly that makes a pub 'good'? Pubs live or die by their reputations, but what are the key ingredients for a pub's success? For me it needs to be simply decorated (more spit and sawdust than fancy wallpaper), to have a friendly buzz, a spare table or bar stool, and to feel intimate, welcoming and cosy. Oh, and maybe some live music now and then.  Is that such an unusual wish list?

Having spent the past five years living in suburbia where even the nearest gastropub was a car drive away, Simon and I were quite excited about moving to an area with not one, but three pubs within a ten minute walk. One of them, The Ship in Distress, is almost outside our front door, and has an intriguing history as a bit of a smugglers' den, so I was especially keen to check it out, but no one locally seemed to share my enthusiasm.

"The Ship in Distress? Mmm, it's in distress," said our Czech dog walker, Magda. Admittedly, she is employed to work in the Nelson down the road on a Monday night, so maybe she was going to be a little bit biased, but a couple of others seemed to agree with her.

So on Friday night, I suggest instead that we start at the Nelson, which is renowned for its Thai food (I'm not sure Horatio had much of a taste for a green curry and chicken satay, but I could be wrong.) Encouragingly there was a bloke with a beard and a guitar setting up in the corner when we arrived and the place was absolutely buzzing, but after just a few minutes of queuing at the bar and then fighting through the crowd to find a table (opposite a row of flashing games machines) we realised that everyone there was already plastered. And not just quietly inebriated, but staggering, hugging, shouting, swearing drunk. Something to do with it being Good Friday and the first day of the local beer festival apparently, but after an hour of watching the guitarist battling with an unappreciative audience, we'd had enough.

From the bluster of the Nelson, heading into The Ship in Distress was like finding a calm port after the storm. It may have lacked a fancy wine list, but it wrapped us up in a cosy, spit and sawdust welcome. Before we'd even ordered our drinks, we were invited to join some locals at the table, and didn't re-emerge again until midnight, after being invited out onto their fishing boat, and for more drinks the next night too. Now that's what I call a good pub!

The Ship in Distress on Stanpit, near Christchurch has a sea food restaurant and features in Alistair Sawday's good pub guide. 01202 984966.

A gorgeous homeware shop in Christchurch - and they turn out to be our neighbours!

I still haven't had the time to get into Christchurch for a good nose around all the lovely independent shops that have been calling to me each time we pass (en route to somewhere glamourous like the DIY shop or the tip) but yesterday - amazingly - it was Simon who stopped the car outside one of them, after spotting some vintage blue and white French house numbers in the window.
Thomas and Lucia is on Bargates, Christchurch and is packed full of gorgeous vintage style home accessories, ticking fabric, Annie Sloan paint, shabby chic furniture, cute door knobs, lighting... and all the other stylish little bits that allow me to dream, just for a few minutes, that I too might have a house straight out of a Country Living shoot.
Even better, the price tags are extremely sensible - unlike so many 'saw you coming' type of home shops - so I'm still thinking that I might have to go back for the beautiful set of antique looking embroidered linen napkins, that seemed a snip at just £13.
The shop is owned by the lovely Matthew and his garden designer wife Sue, who (we discovered as we ordered our new number plate)  live in the house at the end of our back garden. So not only have we now met our first neighbours, they are also hand delivering my new house number plate too - result!

Click here to take a peep at the Thomas and Lucia website.

We've done it - we've moved to Dorset!

Hurrah! We've escaped the smoke of the city and escaped to our new little nest by the sea.

For years Simon and I have dreamt and schemed about doing this - about somehow finding jobs out of London, selling our big house and downsizing to the good life - and, finally, we've done it. Well, sort of.

True, last week we did move into a gorgeous little Edwardian cottage, just a pebble's throw from the Dorset coast. But, ummmm, we also still seem to own a 5-bedroom detached house in the city. And have a son who is still in school 40 minutes away......

So rather than downsizing to a more simple life, we actually seem to have created a far more complicated one, encompassing nightmare-inducingly large mortgages, a family of American tenants, and a whole new set of landlord type of responsibilities, plus a school run that requires me to cross the entire New Forest. But hey, one step at a time I guess!

Inevitably I've had a few wobbles about the whole thing. Such as on Tuesday, when Glam Pam from Texas - our new tenant - called at 8pm to say she couldn't get the radiator in the bedroom to work and could we just 'pop' over. And then there was last Saturday, when all our friends and neighbours gathered for a final dinner and a game of utensil tennis in our very spacious city kitchen and I realised just how much I would miss them. But if at any time I need any reminding as to why we have done this, all I have to do is cross the road in front of the house, breathe in the coastal air and look across the water to the pretty beach huts flanking Hengistbury Head, or pull on my wellies and walk down to Avon Beach with the dog.

So, if you too dream of escaping to the coast and what to find out what doing so is REALLY like, or just want to join us as we discover the best - and worst -  of living in East Dorset, then follow this blog... and do get in touch to let us know what we should be seeing and doing.

How could we resist moving to Stanpit, when this view is just a stone's throw away?