“I do not want to move to Angus.”
This was Victoria Watkins’ one caveat when she and husband Barry set out house-hunting in rural parts of Scotland.
At that point, in early 2024, the couple were living in a cramped home in the city of Chelmsford with three children and family dog Chica.
With a postage stamp garden, little room to play, and no real sense of strong local community, the home wasn’t functioning for the family inside.
But sports rehabilitator Barry, 42, and branding consultant Victoria, 40, had been harbouring a secret dream to move to Scotland one day.
So when Victoria’s eldest child turned 18 and finished school, the couple decided it was now or never.
They set about finding their remote, rural dream home, looking high and low (literally) from Inverness to Argyll and Bute.
Did you see Watkins couple on TV?
After doing some of the searching themselves, they enlisted the help of BBC show Escape To the Country.
“We wanted to get a bit of a helping hand,” explains Barry.
Through the show, they decided to target Tayside, particularly Perthshire, and Fife.
And their episode saw them visit houses in the villages of Wolfhill, Guildtown, and Strathkinness; but none were quite what they were after.
Asked prior to the show if there was anywhere they particularly didn’t want to look, the couple “wrote ‘ANGUS’ in capital letters”, Barry tells me.
Why didn’t they want to move to Angus?
Victoria had already spent 24 hours scoping out parts of Angus ahead of a girls’ weekend in Edinburgh prior to the show, she explains.
On that flying visit, she didn’t feel the “homey vibe” and worried that the area’s spread-out nature made it too sparsely populated for Barry’s business to gain the necessary custom.
So the couple weren’t impressed when, ahead of viewing their fourth “mystery house” option, Escape To The Country host Steve Brown brought them to Monikie Country Park.
“Just before we were shown the house, we were a bit annoyed,” chuckles Barry.
“Because we were in Angus. And we’d said we didn’t want to go to Angus. So we were having a bit of a sulk! We were being quite difficult.”
“Yeah, we were being pretty narrow-minded,” adds Victoria sheepishly. “It was a lovely country park, but it wasn’t the mountains we’d signed up for.”
However, everything changed when Steve showed the couple their “mystery house”, the spacious 4-bedroom former gatehouse of the country park.
It was love at first sight for Barry and Victoria, who could see a future there for their family and Barry’s sports rehab business – now called The Sports Rehab Clinic, Angus.
Driving away, serendipity seemed to be nudging them on.
“I’m a big believer in signs and fate,” says Victoria. “On the way back to our hotel in Dundee, we drove by a sign for Barry Road, and also for Whitfield, which is my eldest child’s surname.
“It just seemed right.”
What do the Watkins kids make of Angus move?
The next day, they brought their children to see the house before making an offer right away.
“We put in an offer on June 1 2024 and it was accepted the same day,” says Barry.
By early autumn, Barry, Victoria and their youngest two children (Rosalyn,8, and Bernie, 7) had begun a new life in Angus, along with rescue pooch Chica.
“At first we thought the house was creepy,” Rosalyn tells me when I visit the new Watkins abode in early 2025.
“But now we like it,” she says, bestowing me with snatches of conversation as she zooms around the garden with Chica. “There’s way more room.”
The siblings have settled in well at their local school, despite now being in the same class instead of a year apart.
“We have loads of friends. Our next door neighbour is in our school too,” Rosalyn adds.
“But we still write to our friends back in England with proper letters – I got a wax seal kit to make them nice for my best friend.”
Slightly more introverted than his big sister, Bernie is in his element as a nature lover, surrounded by countryside and quiet.
And their parents say the difference in their family’s quality of life since moving is “like night and day”.
How has life changed for Victoria and Barry after move to Angus?
“There’s just so much space here,” beams Victoria over a cup of tea at the breakfast bar.
The house is a “work in progress”, but it’s clear the Watkins family has already made themselves at home and embraced country living.
“In Essex, we never had space for them to be able to play.
“Now they play together and separately, because there’s enough room for them to do their own things.
“We spend so much time outside, down at the beach. And we’re at Monikie Country Park every day, which our rescue dog Chica just loves.”
Working life transformed for Barry
But the biggest difference for the couple has been the ability for both parents to work from home, as they now have the room to house Barry’s sports rehab business on their property.
In Essex, both parents worked full time, and though Barry’s work was flexible to allow him to pick the kids up from school, the couple found very little time to see one another.
“We used to see each other for maybe 15 minutes when I got in from work and took over childcare at about 7pm,” explains Victoria.
“We were like passing ships,” adds Barry.
Now Victoria works remotely, with a trip down south every few weeks, and Barry has turned their spacious garage into a sports rehab clinic.
“It means I can nip in and out, and if I have 10 minutes between appointment, I can spend those minutes having a cuppa with Victoria or seeing the kids,” says Barry.
Monikie locals help family feel at home
Indeed, Barry’s business was one of the main factors in the couple’s decision to move to Angus.
The rugby-mad family wanted to live within a 30-minute drive of a rugby club, and have already found a warm welcome at Panmure, in Broughty Ferry.
Ironically, Barry injured his shoulder the first time he went down to play – and has been rehabbing it ever since!
But the rugby club and wider community in the area have provided a great customer base for Barry.
The couple admit they’ve been touched at how readily the locals have brought them and their children into the fold.
“I didn’t know any of the mums at the kids’ old school, or our neighbours,” says Victoria.
“Now we’ve had a loan of wallpaper steamers to help us do up the house, we’ve been invited for dinner and coffees. Everyone’s been so friendly.
“The kids have playdates here!” she beams. “They never had that before.”
Though they miss their immediate family, Barry and Victoria say that their move to Angus has improved the quality of their life so much that they feel more present when they do get to visit their relatives.
And as for homesickness?
“We have absolutely no regrets,” grins Barry. “We went back to Essex at Christmas, and it didn’t feel like home anymore.
“Angus feels like home.”
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