Raise the roof! I’ve won a buy to let house thanks to the Mail
IF at first you don’t succeed... Veronica Clarke is toasting the winning of a buy-to-let house after years of enjoying entering Daily Mail competitions. The retired human resources manager is now planning to enjoy the high life by taking out a mortgage on the property and splashing the cash during a three-week cruise through the Mediterranean and along the East African coast.
She beat more than 112,000 other entrants in the competition and found out she had won when she received a phone call during a family meal to celebrate her birthday.
Mrs Clarke said she has been entering Daily Mail competitions since the 1970s when she and her late husband visited the Ideal Home exhibition and saw a model of a thatched cottage which was up for grabs.
She said: ‘I always remember in the early days of my marriage being at the exhibition when there was a mock-up of the house you could win in the Daily Mail competition.
‘It was a thatched cottage and I thought, “I’d love that”.’
But despite entering regular competitions run by the newspaper over the years, Mrs Clarke never thought she would scoop the top prize.
On Thursday, the day after her 71st birthday and while having a celebratory meal with relatives including six-year-old granddaughter, Tegan, the telephone rang. ‘I was really surprised,’ she said.
Mrs Clarke, from Caldicot, South Wales, said she plans to let out the £260,000 house and will use the income to repay the mortgage she is taking out on the property.
‘I want to take out a mortgage so I have the cash to go out and enjoy myself,’ she added.
Mrs Clarke had already booked her cruise, which will take her from Genoa, Italy, to Durban, South Africa later this year. She plans to spend some of the money on further travels on the high seas.
‘I like going on cruises – you see some exciting parts of the world and it’s a good way to meet people. I love it,’ she said.
Mrs Clarke has been a widow for the last eight years after the death of her husband, Victor, a retired company director, at the age of 90.
But she has plenty of family to keep her busy – two sons, two step sons, her granddaughter Tegan, plus two step grandsons, two step great grandsons and two step great granddaughters. ‘ I’m planning to leave the house I’ve won to my granddaughter,’ she said.
Mrs Clarke was chosen from 112,230 competition entrants to win the luxurious property.
Entrants could take part in three ways. Readers needed to collect six of eight tokens published by the Daily Mail and Mail On Sunday, attach them to a form printed in the newspaper and send them by post.
Otherwise, people could join or sign into our loyalty club My Mail at mymail.co.uk and enter six out of eight Unique Numbers printed on the back of differently dated newspapers published between May 30 and June 6.
Plus, all subscribers to Mail Plus were able to take part.
The winner was chosen at random from all the entrants.
The two-bedroom prize is on housebuilder Taylor Wimpey’s Atrium at Great Western Park development in Didcot, Oxfordshire, which is scheduled for completion this autumn.