By all accounts 2025 was not a good year in our family - I lost my job at the tail end of 2024 and Maddy was made redundant in the summer. So we both found ourselves unemployed with little idea what to do next, but the one thing we did know is that neither of us wanted to continue our careers in the creative industries. Mine in fashion e-commerce and Maddy's in corporate events. We were stuck and we found ourselves asking a question that many people ask at some point:

What do you do when the life you've built no longer feels right?

Neither of us wanted to continue down the career paths we'd been on, they weren't making us happy and worse, they were rewarding us for spending more and more time away from our children. We just didn't know what the answer was.

A family holiday to Portugal gave us the space to think. It was whilst driving through the hills of Tavira (which you can see in the photo above) contemplating life, that we looked at each other and said, "why don't we do this?". The conversation quickly tuned to where should go? France is nice, Spain could work, we like Canada but its a bit far, we have spent a lot of time in Cornwall but the weathers crap, Portugal's lovely but the language is a pain. We like Italy, and we have family there... 

We are both of the mind-set that you need to move quickly - not recklessly but quick enough that you don't stall, because as with any big decision if you dwell on it for too long you think mostly of the reasons why you should not do it, rather than how you can achieve it.

We spent the next few weeks scouring the Internet for properties that ticked all our boxes. It had to have character, it had to have land and it first and foremost had to feel like a home. The following month in September 2025 we flew out to Italy to visit four properties that we had shortlisted. They all had their merits and if viewed in isolation any of them would have been perfect - we made the mistake of viewing the monastery first, and after that nothing could compare. A castle on the outskirts of Todi came close but it could't match the monastery for feel.

We made an offer on the monastery there and then - it truly was a heart over head moment. Of course we went through the necessary due diligence stages, geometras, notaries etc.

We eventually negotiated a price and agreed on a completion date. Fast forward to April 2026, and when whilst driving a van full of our positions the nearly one thousand mile journey to our new home, we received a rather unwelcome phone call - but more about that another time. A couple of days later and we were in the notarios office in Rome signing the contracts. It was ours - sort off...

We traveled back to the Monastery again in June 2026 with my little brother to begin the long process of cleaning and unpacking, ready to bring our children out to their new home for the summer holidays.

- Dominic