This year is the tenth anniversary of our move to East Sussex. When we sold our businesses and were looking for “somewhere in the country”, we had just one criteria. I didn’t want to be more than two hours from my parents. France or Italy were therefore ruled out, by our heads, if not our hearts.
If you draw a two hour circle around west London, that leaves a pretty vast landscape of options. At this point my husband, Sergio said: “Let’s look around Rye.” Many, many years ago, when he worked for Lord Forte, he was sent on a management trainee course by his mentor, to one of the Trusthouse Forte Hotels. The hotel left no great mark on him, but Rye on the other hand, remained in his memory. Sergio is from a medieval hilltop town in Northern Italy, filled with history, ancient buildings and cobbled streets. You can probably see where I’m going with this.
“I’ve booked something called The George,” I announced, “and I’ve found a house”! It was, of course, the same hotel he’d worked at all those years before and the house, of course, had me from the moment we stepped through the gate. And this is the abbreviated story of how we ended up in East Sussex.
I can’t say our first few years went smoothly. When you move, you automatically assume that your life will pick up from where you left off, but just at a different address. How hard could this be? I was a moving expert, having relocated homes and businesses seven and five times respectively.
Everything seemed difficult. Everyday activities became obstacles. Restaurants, hotels, shopping, dry cleaning, hairdressers, you name it, life had become a battle. So much so, that when we’d drive back into London, by the time we reached Deptford and New Cross, not high on anybody’s holiday list, I’d cry tears of relief. Even using currency was a minefield. Trying to pay for groceries with a twenty pound note was hard enough. But when I went into a bank, for yes we had banks in Rye in that dim and distant past, a fifty pound note was greeted with suspicion. At this point I have to highlight a couple of businesses that stood out and gave us hope for things to come. Rye Hire (hallelujah)and the Landgate Bistro.
Ten years later, the town is a completely different place. We have any number of restaurants to chose from, many with wonderful rooms. Rye not only has an arts festival, but a jazz festival and has become a centre for interior design. We have an abundance of independent shops, run by proprietors who actually seem happy to see customers and we have a cinema! When the building was being converted, I overheard a couple of residents saying: “What does Rye need a cinema for?”
And of course Rye, like anywhere imbued with the confidence of hundreds of years of history, is not afraid to embrace the future. Which is why you can now read Rye News online, listen to Ryecast on your phone or admire the wonderful scenery if you follow Ryecoastal on Instagram.
We were at a wedding in Wiltshire last week, but as we crossed the border back into East Sussex, we both looked at each other and said: “It’s good to be home.”
Image Credits: Natasha Robinson .