Three generations of one family upped sticks from the Cardiff suburbs to the heart of Ceredigion to build a whole new way of life.
Richard and Dawn Erskine, plus their daughter Karli, her husband Matt and their three young daughters, pooled their resources to move in together and open what now is a pizza cafe, three and a half acres of varied gardens and a shop at Pantyfod Gardens in the Teifi Valley.
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And their adventure is shown in Channel 5 documentary, A County Life For Half the Price with Kate Humble on Tuesday, July 27.
At the start of the episode we see the gang sell their two suburban homes in Cardiff for a combined £605,000 and leave behind family, friends and jobs in the city, and move to traditional Welsh longhouse, 76 miles west in rural Ceredigion. The £445,000 price of the new home meant that they’d be mortgage-free.
The longhouse where the family have moved to
(Image: Channel 5)
The longhouse was on the market for a whopping £160,000 less than their budget, and came with its own wood-fired pizzeria, two industrial-sized polytunnels, the landscaped show gardens, previously open to the public.
The show documents the family’s efforts to revive this local attraction and put in glamping pods.
The view the Erskine-Pooles fell in love with
(Image: Channel 5)
All the heavy gardening, rebuilding and more, is done while Richard and Matt still work in their full time jobs, as a security consultant and electrician respectively, and Karli homeschools her three daughters during the lockdowns.
When Kate visits at the start of the show, the polytunnels are desolate, broken and empty – at the end of the episode, seven months down the line, the polytunnels are thriving and the pizza oven is set to go.
The polytunnels before they got them back up and running
(Image: Channel 5)
Kate asks Dawn if it’s all worth it and the grandmother gives a touching answer: “Yes, because there’s not many kids, unless you’re brought up in the countryside, get this. [the view]. So it’s got to work for them.”
Karli also loves their new life and at the end of the show you see Pantyfod has been successful in a grant application for developing the venue further.
“In Cardiff, I didn’t let them play out on the streets. You know, I was worried about the cars and here, we don’t see them,” said the mother of Riley, Blake and Brooke.
“They’ve settled in small groups. They’ve made lots of new friends. Covid definitely made things more difficult for us. We’ve just been thrown in the deep end.
“We’ve got to set the business and get everything up and running.
“But this is a beautiful place. Why wouldn’t we want to be here?”
Matt is the pizza-maker of the family
(Image: Channel 5)
Her dad Richard, who has found his niche with the veggie tunnels which will supply the pizzeria, added that it was the right move.
“Everything was sorted in Cardiff. You had no worries, but we’re in the most fantastic place,” said the former detective.
“We’ve come through Covid, the sun is out. And we’re still here. Great.”
You can catch up with Kate Humble’s new show, A Country Life for Half the Price on Channel 5 on Tuesdays, 8pm.
And if you’re interested in seeing what’s going on at Pantyfod Gardens, you can find them, here.
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