Have you put your dreams on hold?

I live a few minutes from the sea but though i love it i do feel very lonely. My family live inland about an hours drive away. I miss seeing them as can only get to them & see my GC every 3-4 weeks if i am lucky. I dont drive so have to get a cab as long bus journeys are out for me now & money is scarce when you are a pensioner on your own. Life is very insecure now having to rent after my marriage broke up but life is what it is & as my Mum used to say there are plenty people far worse off. So I just dream of having my family nearer now. Sometimes dreams do come true, you never know. Keep on dreaming!

And now I have to work to 68 I know how you feel Namechange2016 my retirement will be (according to recent projection) 67 years and 6 months. Whoopppeee only another 12 and a bit years to go then. By which time they will probably have moved the goalposts again.

Yes, I moved to the North East Coast 11 years ago from London. The beaches are empty..hoorah! as I think people see the North East as being cold and dreary...how wrong they are..the coastline is stunning. I do miss not being able to see my son as often as I would like however, but I visit him frequently and feel I have the best of both worlds. There is nothing stopping you from making another move in the mid to long term (just one last round of stress)! My aunt did it 3 times in her eighties!

I lived on the Isle of Wight for 40 years and could see the sea from our bedroom window. When I retired we moved to the mainland, to the same town as our DD, SIL & GS at their request. I still love the sea but nothing the sea has to offer can compare with being close to our family and being hands on grandparents. The icing on the cake was when our DS & fiancee decided to relocate here two years ago.

Day6 if being by the sea is so important to you, then go for it whilst you still can. I would just say though that after awhile you do take the sea for granted.

Merlot Gran sorry you didn't get to move back. Having experienced the freedom of mainland life, I could never go back to living on the Island, beautiful island that it is.

* gilly, thanks for your reply, where you live sounds lovely but too cold for me! LouLou21 where do you live? - sounds like my ideal location

I grew up by the sea and have lived by the sea for most of my life although I have moved house eight times now. Last move was from Dover Kent to Telford in the West Midlands. I really miss the sea but my daughter is adamant she will not relocate again as she found the move (combined with a split from her ex husband) very difficult to deal with. We have been here two years in rented accommodation whilst she found her 'forever house'. I have thought about getting a part time job once all three GC are in senior school (only four years to go) and using that money to fund a holiday caravan by the sea to escape to!

My 26 year marriage had broken down, my dreams of leaving materialised,I met a lovely man and we had our dreams of the life we would lead together, tragedy struck as my 23year old daughter comitted suicide and I had a choice my man or my grandaughter aged 4...luckily my lovely gentle man stepped up ( he is 20 years my juniour) and committed to us both and he is and has been a blessing and a rock to us both and times have been hard on us .14 years on our dreams for our future look no nearer than they did all that time ago my (our)beautiful girl is 18 now but work and life have blurred the edges and I doubt very much that they will happen now as financially our finances are at the least precarious due to a hefty battle for custody for E that took all of my house sale money and 10 years out of work for legal aid ....dreams now are that E has a good future ..my son is not plagued with anxiety and depression and that I live long enough abd remain healthy to enjoy what we have now

downtoearth, so very sorry to hear about your daughter, you sound as if you have a wonderful OH and I hope life is kind to you now, you deserve it

Our dream was to move to Wensleydale when we retired as we had holidayed there for over 25 years so we did it and it didn't work out. Perhaps it was the equivalent of a holiday romance. We moved down to the East Midlands and seem reasonably settled.

We are in the process of following our dream. We sold our house and possessions three years ago so we could build a house boat.
So I am sitting in my caravan as I type which sits next to our boat as she us being fitted out. Our new dream is to get her in the water and cruise the waterways, its been a long time coming

Thank you Devongirl..

Sounds lovely, have a great time minxie!

Oh how this resonates with me. I have always longed to live by the sea and it is definitely an option in the next couple of years. However - I do a lot of childcare for 3 DGC , from choice but also necessity as DD's cannot afford ft childcare so DH and I pick up a lot of it. One DD would move to be near me, other doesn't want to but as a lone parent she needs support.
I am seriously considering buying a caravan for extended periods by the sea but even that isn't ideal as DGC need to be with local friends and football teams etc or risk becoming 'out the friendship loop'
We have this one life and need to follow our dreams but on a practical level I feel there is always a compromise to be made. DH worries I will be too sad if I move away from family but also concern that I might resent thwarted plans. It's just so difficult. Not much help to you I'm afraid but can only suggest you draw up pro's and cons and 'weight them' e.g. No bus service is a 2 but missing family is a 5 etc. Good luck and I hope you are happy in the future with any decisions you make.

I live a ten minute walk from the sea...however my family live up and down the country having moved away over the years to pursue their own lives. I miss them a lot. Buying a static caravan could be your answer ...a little escape by the sea...however these come at a price and there is the ever increasing annual ground rent that has to be paid as well. Maybe you could book a few mini breaks throughout the year ..lots of B&Bs everywhere, also caravan parks, if you choose mini breaks you could go more frequently and be by the sea more often. Once you have settled into your new home this feeling may wear off as you become more familiar with your new surroundings.

I agree with JanaNana --if you move house now and buy something else by the sea I would guess the costs, estate agents' fees and stamp duty could be around £10,000 to £15,000 so why don't you spend that instead on regular trips to the seaside when the weather's good and hunker down in your cozy inland home in the winter?!

Thank you devongirl, still a way to go but we will get there

Never give up on a dream... At the age of 66 I have bought a narrow boat to live on. Funny thing is I see more of family than I did before. They all come and visit me. ..I font have to do the driving any more. I bet if you moved to the seaside they will be visiting regularly. Go for it...do not live with regret that you did not follow your dream x

That's interesting theo, I thought about buying a narrowboat myself, but with DD still at school there wasn't really enough space, also I chickened out of the jobs like getting rid of toilet waste etc>! I love the idea, though, of waking up and being surrounded by water, ducks etc. Good luck to you!

i suppose i'm lucky in that i was born in a seaside town and moved, at 40, to another seaside town.
unfortunately my marriage broke down and i left but stayed in the same town [i moved .5 of a mile away] and i've been here ever since.
i retired 10 years ago and haven't looked back. my daughter lives in the same town - firstly with her husband and now she and her daughters have moved in with me [long, harrowing story] -but my son lives 100 miles away with his wife and daughters so i don't see much of them .............. and he's not one for communicating regularly so i only get to see them twice a year!
i don't think i've ever wanted to move away from the sea even though at the moment i can't spend any time actually beside it. but i'm hoping that once i've had my knee replacement op and recovered from it i can get back to driving and will be able to go places.
i was fortunate before i moved here that dartmoor was close at hand if i wanted the country and here i've got the new forest so really i think it's one of the best places to live - and i wouldn't live anywhere else [not even moving back to where i was born where i'd be closer to my son].

We bought a lovely residential caravan by the sea only 45 min from our house . It's the best thing we ever did, we re there every week and love it! Best of both worlds.

It's a second hand van, but worth using our savings!

This is the most lovely thread. I have cried and laughed at some of the dreams. I like alone as my lovely husband died 9 years ago. I live in Richmond, Surrey which is lovely but I do love too hear about the sea. I am born in thee north west and visit from time to time. I just wish this thread had gone on a lot more. Thanks for the lovely dreams. I have travelled the world with my late husband and seen many lovely places and li ver in Bavaria, southern Germany for 5 years. I love all of Britain.

I would love to live by the sea too. I have a (rather twee) picture on my wall of a cat sitting on a cushion in a window looking down onto a little harbour with choppy waves and a few boats bobbing there. [Sigh] My dream to live somewhere exactly like that! It reminds me a bit of a spot at Filey where we holidayed when the children were small.

*Hooty
My downstairs loo has several seaside decorations including 2 glass jars full of stones, shells and the odd bit of sea glass picked up from various beaches. I long to live in Cornwall but cannot see that happening now. A static caravan in Norfolk is more realistic and I will count myself lucky when I get one

The longest we have ever lived by the sea was twelve months, when DH was on a temporary attachment to a military unit in West Wales and we lived in Manorbier. It was lovely, even in the Winter. It was the beginning of a love affair with Pembrokeshire that has never faded and as I said before we came very near to making it our dream retirement destination. I have to say, though, that I am very happy where we are - I don't have to go very far to feel heather and gritstone under my boots and that is enough for me.