My husband and I were working as Police Officers in England. As is often the case after a long time in the same job decided enough was enough and took a career break to travel the world.
What a year. We backpacked around Nepal, Malaysia, Thailand, China, Hong Kong, Cambodia, Vietnam, Australia and finally New Zealand.
It was here in our beautiful final destination that things began to happen for us. The New Zealand Police were recruiting English Police officers and so we put our names down. Do you know how hard it is to try to complete an application form and a cv on a computer screen with 50 other backpackers waiting to get on it!
Forms all completed and in we returned to England to await our fate.
We didn't have to wait long to hear back and after a lot of written tests, strange questions and intrusive medical checks we were in.
We landed in New Zealand on the 22nd of Sept 2008.
We had been looking online at houses before we left England and this was the first time that we set eyes on Castle Hill Lodge Bed and Breakfast. It was called Anglers Lodge back then and was set in the beautiful town called Garston in Southland. Its not really a town, more a village or should I just say a pub, a school and some great people. No-one has ever heard of Garston, most Kiwis don't know where it is either.
Tried to play it cool when we viewed the house. You know what I mean when you try not to giggle like school kids cause you,ve found the place of your dreams but you want to knock the owner's price down. We failed, she knew we were smitten and on December the 13th 2008 we moved in.
It wasn't being run as a B&B year round so we didn't really have any accounts to see if there was any business. All we knew was that we loved it as a home first and a B&B second and if we could make some money out of it too then it was all good.
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