The Dreams Alive

.....Only just mind. Its no fun being in the licensed trade in the UK at the moment, costs are up and takings are down.

Have spent the past two months getting our house ready for the market, plastering, and a lick of paint inside and out. We can't wait any longer, we've held back and held back hoping for the market to recover here, but it just is not going to happen, we're down £90k on the 07 valuation.

Just have the garden to sort before instructing the estate agents, we have a Japanese Knot-weed problem that's cost a small fortune to treat over the summer, it appears to have died back now, fingers crossed we get a quick sale.

We then have to sell the Pub, that could be more problematic, not many people are buying Pubs at the moment, so we've decided to put it on the market for the price we paid in 07 and hope for the best.

One way or another we WILL be living in Portugal in 2012. The value of our assets have fallen by around £200k in the past 3 years so we will have to scale back our plans. We have spent hours discussing the move and the both of us are in total agreement that no matter how much we have to scale back, the quality of life will still be better than we have now.