"Escape to the Country" (TV programme)

[janelikesjam]

Annoying.

Need I say more?

I want to know how they get such huge budgets to buy their house!

He works as an electrician (substitute any similar job)
She's a hairdresser - or a SAHM
They have four children

How much is your budget? Oh well we would like to spend around £500,000 but can stretch to £575,000 for our perfect house!

Then they find them a house and say it's slightly over budget - it's £700,000.

Yeah right.

They always say they are going to need acres of land. Why?

I just remembered another episode of Colin and Justin's show when they had to find a house for a ginormous French man,he must've been seven foot at least!!

Anyway,they find him this teeny tiny cottage with beams and very low ceilings and they say to him.so whaddya think? Isn't it PERFECT??!! and the very nonplussed Frenchman is saying things like 'Yes,eet eez loffley but zeee, 'ow you say,ceiling is vair low for me' 'Never mind!!',say Justin and Colin, 'Let's look at the kitchen!! Isn't it PERFECT??' 'Yes,eet eez loffley but ze ceiling is...etc etc'

All the way around the teeny tiny house and they were surprised he didn't buy it

I will be first on 'escape from the country'!

ATM, its bloody dark again, my boiler broke yesterday so I spent hours, collecting wood, carting it upstairs and lighting the log burner. I was working all day in a wooly hat, gloves and coat. It is really muddy out. I bribed the DC blow all the leaves off the garden, it took them hours. Our internet is crap, there are loads of jobs that need doing and and I cant get anyone to come out here to do any work on the house because it is too far from town. I have to do 2 school runs, through country lanes in the dark every morning and evening, as the DC are now in school in different directions.

I am a LP, so am seriously on my own out here. The bloody dogs wont stop barking right now, as they are convinced there are monsters outside and I have to walk them in the pitch black with a torch in a minute, as there are no streetlights.

Our house is lovely, but it is HARD WORK, living out here in winter. Anyone want some beams

Escape to the Country is compulsive Sunday morning viewing.
The most irritating one was "Henrietta and Sebastian, who want 5 bedrooms, an acre of land for their Yorkshire terrier, and want to live in the most expensive part of Devon. They have a budget of 200,000 pounds".
Er, dream on love. The word compromise was mentioned about 20 times. And Henrietta hated every house.

There was also one show where couple from London moved to Norfolk, bought land with a historic 200 year old orchard and immediately chopped it all down as "my ponies maight get colic with aaall those apples".

Put a fence round it then you daft cow.

Nothing like wrecking 200 years of heritage to endear you to the locals.

The ones that get me are those who see a house and really like it. When asked what he next move is they say they are going home to work out the finances and then put in an offer. I would have thought the first thing you would do before you go is to work out your finances.

I've been banned from watching it when DH is around. Because I get frustrated by the people.

'We looking to downsize' but when showing smaller house complain they are a 'bit' small. I keep yelling at the tv "that's what downsizing means you idiot".

We want a country cottage - oh it rooms are very small. "It's a cottage you fool they are small".

So I sneak a peak when he not around.

I have just bribed the DC again to walk the dogs in the dark, good job they dont scare easily!

Of course you have never seen proper bollocks until you have seen 'Country House Rescue'.

I escaped from the bloody country!
Ok only to a small market town but wibble

I can remember another where the husband and wife would not agree on anything. At the end Phil said they had decided to separate.

YABU - I love Escape to the Country!
I always time my lunch for when it is on!

I love Alistair and he does seem to get away with the odd cutting comment if people are whinging about something ridiculous.
I also like Aled and Jules.

The formats are different because on the weekday shows they have what I call 'The Boring Bit' where they go off and make Cornish Pasties or something. At weekends the tend to cut that bit and just show the houses!

(I clearly watch too much of this programme! )

I have watched so many that I have seen a few where they have bought the house (or so they say!) and one where they built lodges on their land and I googled them because the lodges looked lovely - so there are a few that follow through with their dream.

There was a couple on the other day who lived in a FABULOUS villa overlooking Lake Garda or somewhere in Italy and they wanted to move to Devon - why, I will never understand!
At first sight I thought they were going to be snobby and stuck up but they were really funny!

I also love To Buy or Not to Buy and Homes Under The Hammer.

I think I might just be a little addicted to property programmes!

Yeah right. You're telling me that with shedloads of cash they don't have loads of Estate Agent twerps falling over themselves to help?

Could be that at that level the vendors have to pay the EAs up front to market the house, so although they will have to put up with whining from said sellers they don't actually need to sell any houses to make any money.

I know someone whose house was on this programme. Its the classic huge barn conversion and the plan was to buy it 'cheap' (yeah right - it still probably cost more than my entire street), develop it and make a fortune by downsizing and selling it on to someone with more money than sense.

Unfortunately, the property crash has got in the way and it is still for sale about 4 years after it was finished. And there are now two other very similar, but better houses for sale in the same area. And they are having to meet payments on a massive mortgage in the meantime, as of course the development was done at the highest possible spec.

As the woman spends her entire life going on about how much better she is than everyone else, I don't think it could happen to a nice person [hgrin].

I don't mind Homes Under the Hammer

Not because I get the warm fuzzy feeling of what they do to houses, no. I just love when they show my old area, which is a crap hole, and enthuse about it being all nice and historic and full of potential. The only potential there is for Crack dealers to find customers. The houses are rotten and damp, the area died on its arse in the 70s and got steadily worse through every other economic downturn, and it just sucks to live there.

I like Home Under the Hammer and I was really sad to read this about Lucy Alexander and her family.

I like to see the before and after. And when they get told off for not having a survey.

Its annoying and what I do notice a lot is that the houses are not actually houses at all but converted farm buildings that have just been chopped off another property by another couple who are still living next door in a proper nice country house and don't want to move but want some cash to retire with.

I live in an area where there is a lot of 'escape to the country by living in a tractor shed' went on about 5 years ago and now everyone hates living in them and they want to escape back to a living in a proper house in a town.

Honestly, I have lived in the country and the fact that most people don't buy anything on the programme is because the houses are not nice and not in nice locations and vastly overpriced.

They always say they are going to need acres of land. Why?

cos they are going to have chickens/donkeys/alpacas field full of animals that they then realise they need to get up at dawn to feed and pick up shit

I love watching these type of programmes they remind me along with elastamum's posts that whilst I like the idea of living the country the reality would probably drive me up the wall.

I'd be one of those irritating people who would say

• I'd like to live some where rural

When shown somewhere rural would then say -Bloody Hell its in the middle of nowhere, where's the supermarket!

I watched one, sure it was escape to the country, where a middle aged couple featured. Both seemed really nice. At the end of the program they put an update saying the man had died shortly after filming

Give me Homes Under the Hammer anyday since it's about all I can afford

Cannot warm to most of the couples profiled on Escape to the Country, probably because I just cannot relate to being able to afford at least 500k pounds in property. Homes Under the Hammer is a nice replacement for my former favorite (American) house p0rn show, House Hunters. I wish they'd show those here.

The original Location, Location (which you can catch repeats of sometimes on the more obscure channels) did used to have "normal" houses on. Of course, even those bring the odd pang now, when people are buying 3-bed semis with a budget of £60000.

Has anyone ever seen Extreme Home Makeover? That was always one of my favourites - they'd basically knock the entire house down, rebuild it and then add a car and tuition fees for the kids to go to college. Really puts DIY SOS into the shade...