‘We wanted a countryside setting near the beach instead of busy roads’
mid-December, British entrepreneur Cathy Homer and her husband Paul braved a rough boat trip from Holyhead to Rosslare so they could view a derelict cottage in Wexford.
The couple has just sold their large art-deco style home in the British Midlands and plan on moving permanently to a smaller doer-upper in the Wexford countryside once their three children — aged 11, 15 and 17 — have grown up. They intend on using it a holiday home in the meantime.
Cathy and Paul already know the sunny southeast pretty well: Cathy was a pastry chef living in Ireland for 10 years, having operated restaurants in Wexford.
The pair’s youngest daughter was born in Wexford and all three children went to school in Kilmuckridge.
“We always felt at home in Wexford,” says Cathy. “I came back to the UK for health reasons, but I never settled there. We wanted a countryside setting, which is primarily what I was bought up in, and we wanted access to the beach instead of busy roads near a town centre.”
In early December, Cathy spotted a twostorey, three-bed rural cottage on Daft.ie and asked her friend in Blackwater to view it. They put in an offer. But there were two major hurdles — a counter-bid and “the estate agent wouldn’t take our offer seriously unless we saw the property in person”.
As a result, the pair — armed with negative Covid-19 tests — booked a cabin on the ferry and drove to Wexford and back over a 10-hour period so they could view the cottage. They self-isolated on their return to the UK.
With the offer accepted, they hope the transaction will go through in 2021 so they can begin renovations. When they eventually move, they hope to continue working from home: Cathy started an online bath salts business called Soak at the start of the pandemic, and Paul is an IT contractor.
“I will run an Irish branch of Soak from a workshop we plan to build on the side of the cottage,” Cathy says. “There are two bedrooms upstairs and one will be an office for Paul and one will be for the children. I’m so excited.”