You need to be a millionaire to move to Wales

We began searching for the farm of our dreams in Wales as we planned our escape from Surrey. The problem was, so did every other dreamer in London and the south-east of England.

Since lockdown, the rush to perform ‘lifestyle change’ has sent the price of the valleys sky high. In fact, I would go so far as to say that Welsh farmers must be downsizing to townhouses in Chelsea.

We were already quite down. It was sad to be served notice on the land we have been renting to keep our horses. We knew we had to buy our own land this time.

We quickly ruled out staying here. Even if we could afford Surrey, we don’t want to carry on dodging stockbrokers on electric bikes.

We settled on East Sussex as a possibility, because the builder boyfriend has family there. But after realising our budget would stretch to only a few acres — we have four horses, so we need four acres minimum — we began scouring Rightmove for a smallholding in Wales.

Night after night we lay in bed searching on our iPhones, having a vague memory that the last time we did this land in Wales was very reasonably priced. But before long, we got the picture. The urge to up sticks and ruin an old farmstead by keeping lamas and erecting yurts for vegan glamping has taken the middle classes by storm.

One winter covered in mud and lama dung and they’ll all be putting these farms back on the market, complete with bifold doors on the yoga studios that used to be the cow sheds. But that doesn’t help us now.

As we began looking, we entered into a strange sort of dance with a farmer in Carmarthen who claimed to be selling a 145-acre dairy farm.