'We drive for 270 miles every other week to renovate a rundown chapel, to one day live our Welsh dream'

Couple Mandy and Rob have always had a dream of living in Wales, of working remotely and living full-time in a special spot surrounded by countryside and a slower pace of life. So when Rob, who loves nothing more than scrolling through Rightmove looking at properties for sale, came across a derelict chapel and pretty stone cottage for sale in Carmarthenshire for just £75,000 the couple were instantly captivated.

Mandy says: "We’ve been to Wales a lot and it’s so beautiful. We currently live on a road that has over 14,000 vehicles pass by every day, and we just want to breathe the air and enjoy the quiet that we need, and to get out into the countryside with our four dogs - to make Wales our home.

"We saw the properties for sale online on a Monday, phoned the estate agent and he said there was a viewing day that Wednesday when everyone was coming and we said, 'we’ll buy it, we don’t need to see it' - we'd already fallen for it - but he said 'I’m not selling it to you unless you come up and see it.'" For more property stories sent to your inbox twice a week sign up to the property newsletter here

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So the couple spent five and half hours in the car travelling up from East Sussex to view the property and they weren't the only ones who had spotted it on Rightmove - Mandy says the site had over 50 potential buyers.

Mandy said: "We parked up by the chapel, took one look at it and said 'we want it, we don’t even need to go inside it' but we did go and have a look and you literally had to force your way through the door of the chapel. Then it was all dark because it was boarded up, so we were all wandering around like idiots with torches trying to see it - we couldn’t see anything really - but we both came out thinking we definitely wanted it."

The duo of properties were being sold by any interested buyers submitting a secret offer across two rounds without knowing what the other potential buyers were bidding, and the couple were devastated when they found out they had missed out on their dream Welsh renovation project by just £5,000.

Mandy remembers: "We were absolutely gutted so we went for a trip down to Newquay in Cornwall instead for a week. On the drive back the estate agent called me and said the sale had fallen through and we can have it for five grand less than we offered and we said absolutely yes! It cost us considerably more than the £75,000 asking price, over double."

But Mandy and Rob's renovation story is more stressful than most because even before picking up a power tool to tackle the structural challenges the problems began with just trying to buy the site because they were dealing with three different sellers - the chapel, the cottage and four acres of woodland they desperately needed because the site has no water so constructing a bore hole was going to be essential.

Mandy says: "It was hell and several times we thought 'is this worth it?', but we kept preserving. The day we finally got the keys we were elated - we drove around the corner and the sun was shining and it all looked beautiful."

It was Wales itself and the dream of moving their lives to be here that kept them going through the difficult purchase, with Mandy saying every time they crossed the Prince of Wales bridge it felt "like bliss", giving them a feeling of instant relaxation and a sense of relief to be back; and they have crossed the bridge a lot in the last year.

Mandy, aged 59, said: "The hardest part overall has been living so far away. Rob goes to Wales every other week - drives up on a Thursday and goes back on a Sunday, and then I go about once a month and we stay in a B&B four miles away as neither of the buildings are liveable.

"The plan is to get the cottage done, and done quite quickly, hopefully liveable in March and then we can stay there, both of us can then work remotely and then have a lot more time to sort the chapel out instead of driving."

There is so much to do at both properties, inside and out, that a novice renovator might feel overwhelmed but the couple have already restored a 15th century pub into their current East Sussex home so they are not phased, but they do know it is going to take time and money.

Mandy says: "We’ve worked really hard all our lives, we’re still working hard and working full-time, and we’re trying to do this renovation remotely, so this is not easy. But we’re doing it as a means to an end to get to the dream we want and we will have to sell our current home to do it.

"We are using a lot of local tradespeople to do a lot of the work but Rob can do a lot of it too, so that’s saving us a fortune but when the budget runs out, which it will, we will have to earn it to spend it but it will be worth it - there are so many beautiful features in the chapel we will be keeping them, it will be done sympathetically, we need to keep the beauty of it."

But Mandy is very clear about one aspect of the renovation journey so far - they couldn't have done it without the support of the local community who have completely embraced them and their endeavour to save these two buildings from total dereliction.

Mandy says: "The local people have been an absolute delight, they have been accommodating, fantastic, helpful, can’t do enough for us and have gone out of their way to do things. They have all been so wonderful - from the guy in the pub where we stay, as soon as he knew what we were doing he halved the cost per night because he knew we were going to be up there so much, to the bore hole guy who sent his men to the site the second day we were there to clear the area.

"The farmer down the road has just come up with his telehandler to get the old Rayburn stove out of the cottage kitchen - we would not have been able to do it without him.

"I think it's important to embed yourself into a community, I need to think that if something happens and I need to be able to call someone and say, 'I’m at the bottom of a well with my leg broken please can you help!' that there is help nearby. Rob has already let it be known that next Christmas there will be drinks and a carol concert in the chapel for the local residents and neighbours and I'm going to try and learn Welsh."

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Since setting up Instagram and TikTok accounts Little Welsh House and Chapel, Mandy says the support of the social media renovation community has been incredible too and has also resulted in some interesting connections. She says: "I have had so many people contacting me including one guy who said he lived there between the ages of one and 14 because his parents were the caretakers of the chapel.

"He asked if he could help with the overgrown graveyard as he knew where the paths were and he’s been a Godsend to us because the paths were a good foot and a half under mud. We’ve already worked on the graveyard - he’s done a bit, we do a bit - it’s been a slow process because we obviously don’t want to disturb anything.

"One lady reached out because she showed her grandad the Insta posts and he said 'I used to go there in the 1970s with my granny to visit a grave' - there are three generations of the same family buried there."

Another productive connection via social media was with a genealogist who has offered to look into the past of the graves, so when the couple uncover a grave stone they send her a photo and she finds the census data and even pictures for the individual, and Mandy says this even includes a photo of the past pastor and what he looks like and where he’s buried.

Mandy adds: "The graves are part of the renovation story too, and we actually love that because the graveyard is not scary, it’s got a really nice feel about it. In my mind I see myself one day wandering out of the chapel in my dressing gown with a cup of coffee in the morning and going ‘morning!’ and have a bit of a chat to them. Once it’s clear we will plant some spring flowers and hang some lanterns and just make it so lovely out there."

Even though it was a fight to buy the site, they needed to drill for water, the weeds were six foot tall, the chapel walls were streaming with water and the floor was so damp they almost fell through it, and the renovation budget will run out, the resolve of this couple comes from the vision they have of their future in Wales - and they are desperate for the dream to come true as soon as possible.

Mandy says: "Literally as we arrive into Wales we feel a huge sigh of relief - I think we’re going to be really happy here because the community and the chapel has got such a lovely feeling about it.

"Some people think we’ve totally lost our minds, that we're having a mid-life crisis, but when anyone asks us what on Earth we are doing, we say, 'well, we’re getting our lives back.'"

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