Claire Walter didn't so much leave London as flee it, nursing a broken heart.
After splitting up with her long term boyfriend she returned to her family home in Shaftesbury, Dorset, taking her cake-making business with her.
Happily the break up was short lived. But her brief taste of life outside the capital convinced Claire that there was no going back.
After camping out with the folks during the worst of the pandemic she and her now-husband Nick moved to the beautiful Georgian city of Bath, where they have been able to upsize from a two-bedroom London flat to a five-bedroom house on the city fringes.
"Nick and I had always thought about moving out of London," said Claire, 37. "We were both brought up in Buckinghamshire, and as we got into our thirties I think that our values just changed. We really wanted to live either in the countryside or with easy access to it."
In London Claire and Nick, 39, lived in a two-bedroom flat which he had bought in Stroud Green. Claire set up her company, Caked, in 2016 and Nick worked as an account director for a media agency.
At the end of 2018 the couple split, briefly, and Claire moved back to her parents' home in Dorset, building a garden studio as a base for Caked. Professionally the move was brilliant. "It is such a great area for weddings," said Claire.
Personally things also worked out well. She and Nick got back together, got engaged in 2019, and Nick quit his job and moved to Dorset. "And then of course the pandemic happened, and we had to put our wedding plans on hold," said Claire.
"We were living with my parents, and we thought it would only be for a short time, but it ended up being months and months."
Eventually, in October 2020, the couple moved to a "tiny" rented townhouse in the centre of Bath. The two-bedroom house cost circa £1,200pcm and was a great staging post for them to get to know the city on foot.
Nick, meanwhile, got a new job, working in marketing for a mobile phone company, and spends most of his week WFH with occasional trips to the office in Reading.
In July 2021 the couple bought their first home together, a £680,000 five-bedroom neo-Georgian house in Lower Swainswick, some three miles north of the city centre and on the southern fringes of the Cotswolds. In September of the same year they got married.
"The best thing about living in Bath is that we can walk out of our door and within two minutes we are in a field with sheep," said Claire.
"We can walk up Solsbury Hill, with the most amazing views, and what I really like about Bath is that because it is so small I really feel like I know it well and can get around it so quickly."
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