As you may recall, Christine and I moved to Sowerby Bridge just over 4 months ago, at the end of November last year, and we settled into a nice flat in a mill conversion. Unfortunately, during our tenancy, some issues arose with the flat, and so we’ve now moved again.
We’re now in another flat in the other wing of the same mill, with the same landlord. The flat is quite a bit bigger, especially in the bedrooms, and features a balcony – we’re on the third floor so there’s a nice view right across the valley from there. It also has gas central heating, rather than electric, so although the rent is higher the lower energy costs will more than compensate, which should mean it is cheaper on the whole. And it means we get to stay in Sowerby Bridge, which we’ve really come to like since moving here – the picture at the top of this post is just one reason why we like living here.
Moving wasn’t exactly straightforward, even though we had planned it to be. The two wings are separate; there’s no link between them, which meant moving all of our possessions down to the ground floor, across and then up to the third floor. And the removal company that we had hired really let us down – despite us paying over £300 for them to move our belongings and furniture, they turned up almost 2 hours late, and then told us they had another job to go to in the afternoon and could only do around 2 hours work for us. Consequently, only the heavy and bulky furniture got moved, which meant us and a few of our friends were left to move everything else; we didn’t finish until 7:30pm the following day. I’ll be writing a letter of complaint about it.
Anyhow, we’re in the new flat, and due to surrender the old keys today. Other aspects of the move have gone better; our phone and broadband is being moved over at no extra cost, although it won’t be activated until Thursday and we have to renew the contract for 12 months. In the meantime, I’m taking advantage of the fact that 3 allow mobile data tethering at no extra cost and using my iPhone as a modem, although with a 1 GB monthly limit I’m being careful not to abuse it. Similarly, our home contents insurer, Endsleigh, charged a £20 administration fee but other than that have been really helpful, as have British Gas and Yorkshire Water.
Moving at this time has also meant completing the Census twice – in full for our old flat, as we were there on the 27th, and again for the new flat to say that it was vacant, which thankfully is much quicker, although even then filling out the Census in full takes all of 10 minutes online.
We still have a lot of unpacking to do over the next couple of weeks, and while moving has been a faff, ultimately we’ve ended up with a nicer flat that better suits our needs.
