Meet Debbie and Des
We moved to Devon from the South East 7 years ago after deciding we wanted a different pace of life. Our 3 children had left home and were living in various parts of the UK so we felt the time was right. We previously lived in a rural village in East Sussex, little did we know how different rural Devon is to rural East Sussex.
We found our rural idyll after living for a year in a cottage half an hour from Exeter where we soon realised that we wanted to be more rural. We were lucky enough to find our beautiful home and moved in within 3 months of seeing it in the newspaper.
When moving to Devon our criteria had been no thatched or grade 2 listed cottages, to be in a village and walking distance to a pub. How wrong we were, we have ended up living in a beautiful thatched Grade 2 listed cottage dating back to the 1600’s. We are in a small hamlet, with no near neighbours and around a 2 mile walk to the pub.
After 6 years living here we are gradually changing the house and garden and have added 3 chickens to our menagerie of 2 dogs, 2 cats and 1 rabbit. We have 3 acres of garden and 14 acres of woodland to wander through with the dogs.
The cottage has not needed much work apart from decoration but the garage and office that were next to the house needed a lot of updating. After lots of discussion we ended up renovating them and that is how The Gamekeeper’s Cottage has emerged.
The name for the cottage has come from our home originally being the home for the gamekeeper that worked at Buckland House. It felt right to keep that little piece of history by naming the new accommodation after it.
Des runs his own travel business from his office at the back of the garage. He works remotely from the main office in Tunbridge Wells and has done so since moving to Devon. Since installing high speed internet it has been easier to run the business.
Debbie works out in the garden trying to transform it into a cottage garden with many cut flowers picked for the house. Many of the plants are grown from seed and usually many surplus plants are available.
This year with everything that has happened the vegetable garden has become more productive with home grown tomatoes, cucumbers, beetroot, radishes, spring onions, lettuce and leeks.
