I tell David, my husband for more than 50 years, that age is just a number and that you are as young as you feel. We may have a combined age of 155, and we may have lived in five different addresses in London, Richmond, Canterbury, Edinburgh and France, but I feel as though we are just starting out on a new adventure: and who is to say it will be our last?  

Our first rented flat was in London during the Swinging Sixties. We threw parties and I commuted to my fashion design job in Oxford Street by moped. Two years later we headed out to the leafy suburbs to buy our first property – a tiny flat – and spent so much on a new record player that we ran out of money for furniture and used it as our only table. 

Later, now with two baby girls, we moved to the Kent countryside for my husband's English teaching job. There, in our first proper house, we hosted our first grown-up dinner party for the Headmaster and his wife – on a real table.

Next we moved 500 miles north; from the warmth of a glorious English summer to dark, cold Edinburgh (autumn arrives early in Scotland). We scrimped and saved to buy a rather neglected Victorian terraced house which, we realised too late, was riddled with dry rot. There was no money left for tradesmen so we spent weekends on DIY and by the time we finished, the house was a homage to the Seventies, with avocado bathrooms, Laura Ashley wallpaper, cork flooring, and a purple cord suite: we were the envy of the baby-sitting circle.

Our own parents were in Dublin and London but the Scottish friends we made became our family. Our kitchen table was a breakfast stopover for the girls’ new schoolfriends, and a handy place to debrief on the gossip of the day. And as they grew up, the basement floor became a party pad, ideal for putting up their friends and, as I was later told, for smuggling out boyfriends.

When the girls went to university, and then on to jobs in London, the house seemed empty. With retirement looming we vowed not to succumb to empty nest syndrome and after much soul-searching decided to sell our much-loved family home. We adored Edinburgh but needed more sunshine and concluded we could buy a flat in the city, a house in France, and spend six months in each.

Our house, in rural Brittany, doesn't have a number. It is simply called Les Hirondelles, the French word for swallows. For the last 15 years, like the birds in the garden, we have returned every summer from May to September and it has been idyllic. The girls have visited often with their growing families.

But this summer our drive to Les Hirondelles felt a little longer; the wooden staircase David built to our wonderful bedroom, with views over cornfields and of French blue skies, felt a little steeper. David says the lawn we sowed a decade ago seems more vast every time he cuts it. 

Each of the homes we have made together over five decades of married life has been wonderful in their own way; it would be difficult to choose a favourite. The lesson I have learned, from all of our moves, is that there is a time for everything and that the key is to recognise early on the moment to start something new.  

So this summer will be our last here. There will be at least one more chapter in our story, and it will be a good one, but we just don't yet know where it will take place.

AS, Brittany

Further information

What makes a house a home and why does it matter so much? Our new series, 'Moving Stories', inspired by Savills new advertising campaign, explores the complex relationship between home and home-owner with funny, sad and bittersweet reflections on moving out, moving in and moving on.

We invite you to submit your own Moving Stories and we will donate £50 to Dreams Come True for every one we publish on Savills UK Blog. We'll also make a donation for every story submitted for consideration.