Around half a million people leave the UK to live abroad each year. A survey by the British Council showed 72 per cent of 18- to 30-year-olds would consider living and working overseas, with cold weather, the high cost of living, extortionate childcare, a lack of work-life balance and even poor romantic prospects among their motivations for leaving the country. The i Paper’s Expat Files follows Britons who have taken the leap and settled elsewhere, detailing the ups and downs of their journeys.Carli, 50, and James Mayhew, 49, ditched their stressful jobs in Dereham, Norfolk and moved in 2022 to the lake-side Umbrian village of Castiglione del Lago. Here Carli tells tell Silvia Marchetti about the many benefits of life in Italy.
Back in Norfolk, where James worked as an optician and I ran a coffee shop, we led a very stressful life. With four children to support, the burden of a mortgage and both of us working full time, we felt we were merely surviving, not living. We felt trapped, with no family time. Working was just a means to an end – we sometimes felt we hardly saw each other.
Like many people, we had talked over the years about making a big change – living in a different country and trying a different lifestyle. Our oldest daughter who has severe learning difficulties was due to finish college, meaning she would be needing extra care moving forward. We wanted a better lifestyle for our whole family.
We had first discovered Castiglione del Lago in 2015 on a holiday in the Umbria area of Italy. It completely stole my heart. After the pandemic, we decided to take the leap, but it wasn’t all smooth sailing.
We visited twice to view houses, but it took two years to sell our home in Norfolk. Eventually we sold it for £335,000, and along with the money from the sale of a cottage we had renovated, we were able to purchase our Castiglione property outright for £170.000.
With no mortgage, we resigned from our jobs and in 2022 packed up our belongings, dogs, and kids into our caravan and drove to Italy.
We live in a 4-bedroom house with a large attic, six former pigsties, two barns, two hectares of land, and olive trees. The views are stunning and we’re close to Florence and Rome. We rent part of our house to holidaymakers and are currently restyling one pigsty as an extra guesthouse.
As a couple, we thrive when we are together, and that’s what moving to Castiglione has given us. We feel more content here, we spend more time as a family together with our children and five dogs, plus a cat, rabbit and chickens.
We have less financial strains and more time for ourselves – we have more holidays and open-air activities at the nearby lake and beach such as kayaking, paddle boarding and sailing. I love to cook with all the lovely local produce – we have more time for family meals and James and I go out several times a week for a coffee or avino.
We work together, renting out the holiday accommodation, and we also earn money from a second-hand furniture business, and looking after expats’ second homes. The kids help out too, it’s a true family affair.
Looking back, we’ve made lots of progress. Each time we talk to our friends in the UK, they complain about how expensive life is there – the prices of everything just seem to go up and up.
The only downside has been the local schools. The transition into the Italian system was tough. We put the kids straight into local schools so they would learn the language, and while they coped fabulously overall, there were real hurdles.
The quality of teaching is not the same as we were used to in Britain. Teachers frequently don’t turn up for lessons. Oliver experienced bullying, and Grace had a rough time as well. I had to intervene and temporarily remove Oliver, now in secondary school, until the school addressed the issue.
We have had several run-ins with teachers – I don’t think they are used to parents turning up to defend their children. Our eldest child, who has special needs, has gone back to the UK where she lives with my mum as she couldn’t adjust here. That’s been extremely hard, but we still love our life here.
We are probably not earning as much money overall compared to the UK, and it’s hard to tell precisely because spare cash goes straight back into our renovating our Castiglione property. But life is more flexible and less stressful.
I must say, we haven’t really made lots of friends, but we know a lot of people. It’s hard because most of our clients are English, so our Italian isn’t as good as it should be. However, the kids are fluent and have many friends.
Though taxes in Italy are higher, the overall cost of living is much lower, making day-to-day life significantly better and more affordable. We spend about €250 (£214) a week on food, and we eat well with lots of home-cooked meals with meat from the local butcher.
Back in the UK, we only ate out on special occasions and food expenses were an extra £100 a week. Overall, it’s a great work-life balance in Castiglione del Lago, one we could only dream of back in Norfolk.
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