I’ll go back to our previous town for a moment.

We both worked in/from/near that little town, and the town contained most of the shopping we needed as well as banking, medical facilities, library, church, local pubs, etc. all within easy walking or cycling distance. Being a little town in the country, it had good access to the great outdoors … to a variety of cycling, hiking, and canoeing within cycling or short driving distance.

When we looked for both of the houses we lived in there, price was one of our first considerations. The place had to be below a certain amount of money.

Quite high on the list were also certain features including a lock-up garage, at least 2 bedrooms, detached enough so that we were not sharing a house wall with a neighbour, storage, and the place had to be in reasonably decent condition.

Then came the matter of proximity. We could easily find a place in one of the surrounding towns (anywhere from about 13 to 25 km away) but then we would have to travel to the town where we worked every day. Cycling during the summer would have been all right, and even quite enjoyable despite the challenging nature of the terrain. But cycling in the winter would have been considerably less desirable. It doesn't get cold there like it does in Canada, but overnight lows can be around 0C and daytime highs struggle to make double digits + lots of rain + lots of heavy fog + the usual darkness of winter = uncomfortable and potentially dangerous cycling conditions.

So although we viewed houses in the surrounding towns and considered them as possibilities, we held out for a house in the key town so that we could walk or easily cycle to most places we wanted to go.


The compromise … while we enjoyed living in that town, it was missing a couple things: a good fitness centre and a good post-secondary education facility. Also, although it did have adequate shopping facilities, if we wanted anything more, we had to travel about 100 km one way to one of the larger cities to get it.