The conversation that started it, the reasons that mattered and the ones that turned out not to.
It started, as these things do, on a wet Tuesday in February. Both children had been indoors for four days. I am Spanish-born and had spent my childhood between two countries, and I said out loud for the first time: why are we not doing this there?
The reasons that mattered
- Time outdoors — genuinely, most days of the year
- Being closer to my Spanish family
- A slower pace of life for the children while they are still small
- A lower cost of living, though this was never the main driver
- Wanting to give the children the bilingual childhood I had
The reasons that turned out not to matter
We worried enormously about the language, about schools and about whether we would make friends. All three sorted themselves out faster than the paperwork did.
What we underestimated was how much energy the practical side of moving would take, and how much we would miss small, unglamorous things about Manchester.
Why Orihuela Costa
We wanted sun, a beach we could walk to, an international community so the children were not the only new arrivals, good links to Alicante airport, and somewhere affordable enough that we were not gambling everything.
Orihuela Costa ticked all five. Eighteen months of research and three scouting trips later, we signed a rental and booked the removal van.
